Sometimes you've got to recognize reality and let things go: the diminishment of DC's "Chinatown" as an authentic place

 DC no longer has much of a "Chinatown," although there are some remnants, because as property prices increased and the central business district continued to grow and intensify, succeeding generations immigrated directly to the suburbs.  From "What makes a Chinatown Chinese?":

With traffic in no logic, streets that never seem to rest, and an earthy, old country-ish smell that greeted me on my arrival, I felt nothing but foreign in this town. All signs are in Chinese: advertisements, store windows, crates selling bok choy and other food items, newspapers, and street posters. I find myself part amused part clueless. 

San Francisco

My fascination with Chinatown began on my very first visit. As a starry-eyed tourist, I was left admiring the Chinese-style buildings and colorful elements adorning the bustling streets. I wondered what really made a Chinatown Chinese. What makes these ‘towns’ unique? Have they remained traditional as they were once? What led to the origin of Chinatowns across the globe in the first place? Below, I explore one such Chinatown in America.

For DC, that's the Annandale area of Fairfax County, which is also highly represented by other Asian ethnicities, in particular Vietnamese (which first moved to Clarendon in Arlington County post-fall of the South Vietnamese government, another example of emigrating directly to the suburbs) and Koreans.

This isn't an issue unique to DC -- "The politics of Chinatown development in American cities," Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

abstract:

Through a comparative case study of Chinatowns in Chicago, New York City, Oakland, and San Francisco, this paper argues that the variation in the trajectory of Chinatown development is contingent upon two major factors, namely, the internal cohesion of Chinatown elites (cohesive versus fragmented) and the political integration of the Chinese community into local politics (strong versus weak). Based on the two dimensions of internal cohesion and political integration, the paper creates a fourfold typology of Chinatown development: constrained development, shrinking neighbourhood, contested development, and comprehensive development. The typology provides an analytical framework to study the development of Chinatown and other ethnic communities beyond the cases.

-- "5 Chinatowns and the Communities Working to Preserve Them," National Trust for Historic Preservation 
-- Strategies for sustainable Chinatown, SF Planning
-- Revitalizing Chinatown Businesses: Challenges And Opportunities, Asian American Federation
-- "How to Save Chinatown: Preserving affordability and community service through ethnic retail," Berkeley Planning Journal
-- "Maintaining Authenticity in Ethnic Enclaves: Chinatown, Koreatown, and Thai Town, Los Angeles," masters thesis
-- "Chinatown: The Neoliberal Remaking of Culture in the Contemporary City," University of Chicago
-- "Rethinking the Growth Machine: How to Erase a Chinatown from the Urban Core," Urban Geography

-- "A New Chapter for the Eden Center?," Arlington Magazine
-- "At the Eden Center, historic businesses stand tall and new ones plant roots, ARLNow
-- "New Tools for Keeping Immigrant-Owned Shops in Place," (University of) Maryland Today

And wrt to government goals it becomes the tension between a thriving residential and commercial district and Asian identity ("Chinatown versus Chinese identity") versus an entertainment district.

Chinatown hasn't had "spectacular shopping" for decades. Gallery Place ad display, 2009.

But DC wants another try, according to the Washington Business Journal, "Tim Ma, Winston Lord tapped to lead next stage of Chinatown revitalization."  From the article:

Lord and Ma say they will act as a liaison between various legislative bodies and the community, connecting residents with programs and opportunities as well as leveraging their resources and connections with the District to mitigate challenges that community members are facing. 

The council, on first reading, also approved more than $8 million to fund construction of Gallery Square, a designated "high priority" project recommended by the task force, which aims to transform the space surrounding the Reynolds Center into a plaza that will host performances and markets. The council will consider the measure on second reading July 28.

But some residents and advocates aren’t convinced this plan will address the core challenges facing working-class Chinatown residents. Over the decades, the community has stood at a crossroads, balancing the increased foot traffic from large-scale developments with rising rent prices that have displaced small businesses and longtime residents.

This follows the creation of a "Chinatown Task Force" and aims to implement its findings.  It listed eight items as part of a presentation at an open house last year.

The Task Force’s focus areas include: 

• Visioning: Develop a strategic vision for the future of the two city blocks that make up the Capital One Arena and Gallery Place, and reimagine the potential for amenities, activities, and new uses for this vibrant neighborhood. 

• Activation: Identify temporary and permanent activation programs, including special events, to generate foot traffic and increase visitation to Gallery Place/Chinatown. The Task Force will identify and coordinate activities to enhance public safety, cleanliness, and public health resources in and around Gallery Place/Chinatown.

• Investments and Incentives: Source, evaluate, and recommend investment tools to support stabilization of existing businesses, prioritize critical capital investments, and reposition real estate assets into new productive uses.

• Community Engagement and Marketing: Promote community activations and provide updates about changes and planning for the future of Gallery Place/Chinatown.

I think it's a lost cause, not just because of the proximity of Capital One Arena, home to professional basketball and hockey, but because you can't have an ethnic district without ethnic residents and businesses (""Richard's Rules for Restaurant (Food) Based Revitalization, Salt Lake City and DC's Chinatown").  Even though the Task Force came up with a decent plan if you look at it in a vacuum separate from the reality on the ground.

-- 5 Goals for Chinatown, DC Planning

Chinatown only has a few hundred Asian residents, and has been shrinking ever since the construction of the original Convention Center in 1984.  The Task Force committee only had one Asian member, and all the co-chairs are Anglo or Black.

Are they going to provide incentives for Chinese people to live there?  From the 2013 blog entry, "Sometimes shouldn't you just call it a day: maintaining DC's Chinatown":

I think it's time to call it a day on Chinatown. For a long time, it's been Gallery Place. A handful of Chinese restaurants, a couple stores selling Asian knick-knacks, some lightpoles, and a senior housing building that looks the same as any other housing building constructed in the 1960s or 1970s doesn't make a place "Chinatown."

Compared to thriving Asian communities within other cities, such as Chinatown in Manhattan or the Chinatownization of Main Street Flushing (see "In Neighborhood That's Diverse, a Push for Signs" and "The Melting Pot on a High Boil in Flushing" from the New York Times), putting Chinese characters on signs for restaurants and other retail establishments just doesn't cut it.

Salt Lake City and Japantown.  Apparently there was a Japanese district on the edge of downtown, although it was pretty much eradicated a few decades ago with the construction of the Salt Palace Convention Center, where like Chinatown in DC, the core of the district was lost as 93 businesses closed and the population dispersed.

Down to a single block, two religious institutions--a Christian church and a Buddhist temple--remain.

As part of the creation of a "sports and entertainment district" around Delta Center arena, which now has both professional basketball and hockey after last year's relocation of the Phoenix Coyotes, there are plans for rebuilding this district ("At Nihon Matsuri festival, Salt Lake City Japantown leaders consider risks, merits of sports district," Salt Lake Tribune, "Cautious optimism for Salt Lake City Japantown’s future," Nichi Bei News).

From the SLT article:

And while project leaders say it will ultimately improve Japantown, local leaders who remember losing the culture hub to eminent domain and development in the 1960s are skeptical.

“I grew up here, and I remember as a child coming to Japantown and it was a cultural gathering place in those days,” said Floyd Mori, the festival founder and chair. “That was lost. It just went poof because all the commercial establishments were eliminated.”

I didn't know, being a recent transplant to the city, that movement for restoration predates the current Arena-related program  ("Revitalizing Japantown Street," University of Utah Alumni Magazine, Japantown Visioning Project).

I think it's headed for the same end as DC's Chinatown.  While one of the above-cited works includes a reference to Japantown in Los Angeles, the same dynamics pertain to other ethnic districts be they Japanese, Italian, Polish, German, Hispanic, Greek, Jewish districts, etc. 

If you lose the dynamism of the immigrant migration chain--first to the city then to the suburbs instead of direct to the suburbs, ethnic residents and businesses, and a strong demand for ethnically-related business activity rooted in serving the native population, there isn't enough economic, residential, and social activity to maintain the integrity of the district.

Dynamics of district failure can be extended beyond ethnic enclaves.  Thinking about the paper,,"The politics of Chinatown development in American cities" (Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, I realize the dynamics of ethnic district shrinkage are likely the same for other types of "districts" in cities be they ground-up developed arts districts that lose out to real estate development, working ports that are replaced by waterfront entertainment districts, New York City's garment district, etc.

Deeper insights into the Growth Machine thesis ("The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place," American Journal of Sociology). I am thinking this dissertation is well worth a complete read, because its findings along with some of the key cited works, are very much extendable to the analysis of other types of development within cities, especially in terms of decision making.  Its findings might be a very good extension to Growth Machine Theory--the book Urban Fortunes is cited, although the author doesn't believe that the theory is particularly applicable to understanding the growth and decline of Chinatowns..

I argue the Urban Regime Theory of political science provides the explanation for "how" the Growth Machine works.  The findings of this dissertation could take that further.

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"Unrelated" is the value of immigration to the revitalization of cities facing out-migration and broken economies, e.g., the Somalis in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Portugese in various East Coast cities, etc.  Writer Doug Saunders captures this in the book Arrival City ("Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World by Doug Saunders," Guardian).  Although Saunders focuses on much larger cities.

And the attack on immigrants by the Trump Administration. Which fails to acknowledge the importance of immigrants both to the national economy as well as to local economies, some extremely small, like Denison, Iowa.

-- "Immigrants as in-migration and city-town revitalization," 2024