Social Geography of the Los Essay

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57). This makes the idea that the minority communities that are using the community as a "springboard" for assimilation because there are less of the domestic non-Hispanic whites in the areas in which immigrants would typically assimilate.

There has even been the development of what is referred to as planned communities. Irvine California serves as a good example of such a development. Irvine was developed from ranch lands from a single developer that constructed "urban villages" in Orange County (Maher, 2004, p. 782). The particular site selected for this 1-997 study was in many ways a "typical" Irvine neighborhood. A planned community developed in the mid-1970s, Ridgewood comprised 246 single-family homes on a collection of cul-de-sacs connected by three public through streets: on average, residents were highly educated- 39% had graduate or professional degrees- and most of those who were employed worked in professional, managerial, technical, or sales positions (Maher, 2004, p. 784). This planned community was nearly ninety percent non-Hispanic whites.

The original appeal of this type of community was that it was away from the chaos that was perceived to be inherent in the inner-city. However, the prices of these properties were exclusively prohibitive for lower income earners such as in the migrant communities. However, migrant workers provided many of the unskilled jobs for the homeowners in Irvine and therefore located themselves in as close proximity to their jobs as they could afford. Much of the service industries, such as housekeeping or gardening, moved to the surrounding communities such as Santa Ana and consisted of a dominantly Latino population.

As minorities began to populate these areas then this changed the demographics which were once predominately white.

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As a man named Jeff explains in an interview, as a white man - used to be the "typical person here in Orange County," there had been a "decline" in the "social structure" of Santa Ana and Costa Mesa (the two closest areas experiencing significant Latino in-migration), much like in Los Angeles (Maher, 2004, p. 789). This in turn can lead to citizens, such as Jeff, to consider leaving their homes to find a place that perceive as safer.

It is not only Latino individuals that have formed ethnic enclaves. California, by itself, accounts for 40% of all Chinese-Americans (1.1 million) traditional Chinatowns continue to exist to receive newcomers and attract economic investments from co-ethnics, but they no longer serve as primary centers of initial settlement as the majority of new immigrants, especially the affluent and highly skilled, are bypassing inner cities to settle into suburbs immediately after arrival (Zhou, Tseng, & Kim, 2008, p. 60). Places such as Monterey Park were slowly converted into a predominantly non-Hispanic white middle-class community, to a diverse middle-class community, and then to a predominately Asian and Chinese middle-class community. Zhou (2008, p. 68) attributes much of the development of the demographics to foreign investment that wishes to develop the cultural qualities of the area.

Conclusion

Population demographics and ethnicity are incredibly complex and interesting to study. While once simple models seemed adequate to explain demographic movements, these no longer seem to adequately explain the complex web of factors that are inherent in a globalized world. Newer developments occur somewhat organically based on a myriad of factors and individual perspectives. It is likely that future demographic trends will only increase.....

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