Immigrants and the Revitalization of Los Angeles: Development and ...

immigrant neighborhoods have laid roots at the fringes of the CBD, establishing themselves in the spaces abandoned by the transformation of industry to service sectors in the CBD (Ward 1971; Ward 1968). At different historical points, these spaces have become attractive to developers, who have organized the political mechanisms of the city, especially its planning mechanism, and the economic resources of the CBD elite in regenerating these “blighted” neighborhoods.

First, a group of powerful economic and political stakeholders takes an interest in a previously “marginal space” (Smith 1995). These marginal spaces are comprised of a mixture of low-income people, social deviants, people of color, and, often, immigrants (Gans 1982). Once this interest is sparked, the gaze⁷ (Sartre 1956) of redevelopment begins to awaken the institutional mechanisms that exist in the neighborhood. Once an area is noticed by the city's gaze, this new attention by the city's formal institutions of redevelopment, in turn, changes the institutional embeddedness⁸ within this “place” and begins the process of social transformation in the neighborhood. The institutional forces shaping redevelopment thus awaken (through policy initiatives, renewal and economic development programs, citizen participation mechanisms, police engagement, and non-governmental organizations' [NGOs] commitment) and take on a life of their own. This “marginal space” now becomes a “place” of contestation, opportunity, change, and structuration.⁹

The gaze serves as the starting point for consideration of “blight” as a label that, once attached to a place, conveys the institutional legitimization from the state that the place is, indeed, blighted and in need of change. “Blight” is a politically charged term with a loose definition. Michael Dardia defined blight as a “combination of physical and economic conditions—such as vacant or decrepit buildings, declining property values, poverty, and high crime rates that prevent private enterprise from developing the area” (Dardia 1998). Beyond an economic definition, the concept of blight has historically been associated with unhealthiness and disease.¹⁰ This was especially true during the progressive era, when social reformers were concerned about immigrant overpopulation and unsanitary conditions that might spread disease. Hence, the gaze