Allen and other observers have looked at these developments with particular emphasis on the interplay of geography, race and income. Clearly, one concern for the long-term future of the Valley lies in the prospect that some regions might become "unmeltable" ethnic pockets with insoluble, long-term social and economic problems.
And to be sure the "ghettoization" of some areas, particularly in the North Valley, has brought with it some degree of urban decay, such as in older industrial neighborhoods in Pacoima.45 In certain areas, dilapidated houses, crime, drugs, and gangs rival the worst conditions seen in more traditional inner-city areas of Los Angeles.46
Within the Valley, however, exist a wide range of communities, some ethnically diverse while others are ethnically homogenous. Ten communities are at least two-thirds Caucasian, and all except two (Tujunga and Valley Village) have poverty rates significantly below the region's average (17.8 percen t).47 The City of San Fernando and the community of Pacoima, on the other hand, are almost completely Latino. Only one community, Lake View Terrace, has a large African-American population (20 percent), although its Latino population is sixty-one percent. A closer examination of Valley neighborhoods reveals a complex demography.
To develop a better understanding of the San Fernando Valley's demographic diversity, the thirty-one communities that make up the San Fernando Valley (including the independent cities) were separated into high- and low-poverty communities based on whether their poverty rates were above or below the regional median of 15.9 percent. These communities were then classified by whether they were characterized by a relatively higher or lower concentration of a particular ethnic group. The results for relatively poor communities are reported in Table 10.
Twenty-five percent of the communities with high concentrations of Caucasian residents were in poor communities. Meanwhile, eighty-one percent of the communities with high concentrations of Latino residents were in higher -poverty communities. More than two-thirds of the communities with African-American populations greater than the median (3 percent) were in low poverty areas. Asian communities were split evenly between the high poverty and low poverty areas of the city. These data seem to support the concern that communities tend to be highly segregated, and that segregation is closely correlated with economic status.
This conclusion ignores a very important deviation from the statistical average: some neighborhoods are relatively affluent despite high concentrations of minority residents. For example, almost eighty-five percent of Arleta's residents are minority, but the community is still below the median poverty rate for the San Fernando Valley (Table 11). Three quarters of the population in Mission Hills is minority, but it ranks among the lowest poverty communities in the Valley. Similarly, more than one-third of the residents in Granada Hills are Latino, Asian, or African-American, but its poverty rate is less than nine percent.
For the most part, residential segregation is less extreme than on the south side of the Santa Monica Mountains. This may have something to do with the improving economic picture experienced by most Valley residents. When asked, eighty-three percent of Valley residents said they were "financially better off" in 2000 than they were five years ago.48
Rather than being made up of distinct ethnic pockets, much of the Valley is crossquilted, with middle class and working class pockets often in close proximity, a nuance lost in statistical averages and medians. In many neighborhoods, unremarkable and even decrepitlooking boulevards surround tree-lined residential neighborhoods that are often quite comfortably bourgeois and exceptionally close-knit. In addition, much of the statistical decline in household incomes reflects neighborhood "filtering," where immigrants with families move into neighborhoods and replace older couples, many of them "empty nesters."49
Recent analyses by demographers at California State University at Northridge shed light on the uniquely dispersed nature of the Valley's ethnic evolution. The highest increases in Asian population, for example, took place in such stolidly, once overwhelmingly white communities as Burbank, Chatsworth, Granada Hills, Northridge, Sherman Oaks, Tarzana, Toluca Lake and Woodland Hills. Latino population growth was heaviest in the Northeast Valley but over forty percent in communities like Valley Village, Valley Glen and Woodland Hills, which have long been bastions of white middle class communities. African-American growth, although overall smaller in scale, was similarly dispersed.50
Los Angeles County has nearly 10 million residents which represents 30 percent of California's population.
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