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if adopted, could change redevelopment policy, especially in emerging immigrant neighborhoods in the U.S. A process of co-adaptation between endogenous and exogenous institutions involved in the MacArthur Park neighborhood led to co-evolution among several sets of stakeholders and, ultimately, to the revitalization of this now culturally, socially, and economically vibrant space.
How and why were MacArthur Park's local governing institutions able to co-evolve with organic community institutions and organizations within a contentious environment of rapid social and physical change to the neighborhood? Three main variables helped the community maintain their sociocultural space: their “immigrants' milieu” (that is, the immigrant capital present in the neighborhood), the community-based organizations that were networked and that maintained grassroots power, and, finally, the citywide Latino political power that emerged in the mid-1990s. Together, those three variables greatly facilitated the survival of the neighborhood's Mesoamerican immigrants' milieu.
The positive impacts of the co-adaptation occurring in MacArthur Park have implications for public policy and social policy that are particularly relevant and important to the field of city planning, particularly regarding issues of planning for an increasingly multicultural public. Complex interactions between endogenous and exogenous institutions, and involving endogenous and exogenous resources, were at the root of the unique outcome in the neighborhood. Planning resources need to be allocated into multicultural neighborhoods, where they can interact with resources that already exist within these neighborhoods, helping to assess and build on the strengths and resources already present in the areas. One can analyze the outcomes of such complex interactions. Historically, within the field of redevelopment, the interactions have generally been negative, complexity has been neglected in favor of force, and outcomes have been detrimental. MacArthur Park was an interesting and important exception.
The findings of the research reported in this book are especially relevant to furthering our understanding of local economic development in an increasingly globalized world. Globalization is changing both the physical and social makeup of cities. New geospatial patterns create new