Clearly many residents, and some businesses, have been upset with the changes within the Valley. Traffic, crowding, more intensive development are themselves unsettling but perhaps the most radical shifts have been those associated with demographics. Once virtually all-white, and overwhelmingly native born, the San Fernando Valley has become increasingly a mixed area—mestizo in Spanish—that challenges many of the traditional assumptions still held about the region.
These changes are not viewed by local residents as an unalloyed benefit. Local residents, according to a recent survey by the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, are equally divided between those who think that immigration has been "good" for the community and those who feel it has made life worse. These changes also accompanied a rising concern among Valley residents about crime, although most Valley residents considered the area safer than the rest of Los Angeles.32
Part of the problem lies with the relative suddenness of the change. As recently as the 1960s, about nine out of ten Valley residents were Caucasian. By 1980, however, as much as twenty-five percent of the population was a racial or ethnic minority. Change in the 1980s was even more rapid, with the most dramatic decreases in white population taking place in the central parts of the Valley. Some areas that had been over eighty percent white at the beginning of the decade were now forty percent or less by the end.33
Across America, particularly in the sunbelt, formerly white suburbs have become favorite places of settlement for new immigrants, as well as native born minorities. This is true in the Chinese and Asian, the Vietnamese enclave as well as the new immigrant communities emerging in Houston, Dallas and Atlanta. As in the Valley, these newcomers are often replacing predominately Anglo populations, who are moving further out to the periphery or back to the countryside.
This marks a sharp contrast to the immediate post-war era when these suburbs, like their workforces, remained highly segregated. Between 1950 and 1970, a period of intense suburban development, ninety-five percent of suburbanites were Caucasian.34 The demographic shift in the Midopolis, or older ring of suburbs, started in the 1970s, when African-Americans began moving out of the inner city.
In the ensuing two decades, middle-class minorities and upwardly mobile, recent immigrants have shown a marked tendency to replace Caucasians in the suburbs, particularly in the inner ring, increasing their numbers far more rapidly than their Anglo counterparts. This is the case for the San Fernando Valley.35 Today, nearly fifty-one percent of Asians, forty-three percent of all Latinos and thirty-two percent of African-Americans live in the suburbs.36 The tendency towards greater diversity in the older suburbs can be seen across the country. The immediate suburbs around Denver, for example, experienced a fifty percent increase in their Latino populations during the 1990s.37
This development is particularly notable in those regions - such as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Washington, Houston, and Miami - where immigration has been the heaviest. The decline of aging suburbs, such as Upper Darby near Philadelphia and Harvey outside Chicago, are more a product of inner -city groups moving outward than new immigration.38 Midopolitan regions that lack immigrants - New Orleans, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Indianapolis - now struggle to retain their attractiveness as Caucasians and affluent African-Americans flee to the outer suburbs.39
Often immigrant migration is seen by pundits as a sign of decline. However, in many cases, immigrant migration is really a reflection of a renewal of middle-class aspirations. The Spanish-speaking son of Mexican immigrants, Alex Padilla, today, LA City Council President, moved to Pacoima when he was young. His father was a short order cook and his mother a house cleaner. Yet their aspirations, Padilla recalls, were very much middle class; and their reasons for leaving an older section of Los Angeles for Pacoima would have been familiar to earlier generations of Valleyites:
"We moved to the Valley for two reasons. We could afford it and we could have a backyard. That was it. That's what we were looking for."
The key to understanding is in the changing needs of the immigrants. In contrast to the early 20th century, when proximity to inner-city services and infrastructure was critical, many of today's newcomers are more dispersed due to our auto-oriented society. They need to stop only briefly, if at all, in the inner cities. Their immediate destination after arrival is more likely the San Gabriel Valley than Chinatown or the East Los Angeles barrios, Fort Lee (New Jersey) rather than Manhattan. California State University/Northridge demographer James Allen notes: "The immigrants often don't bother with the inner city anymore. Most Iranians don't ever go to the center city and few Chinese ever touch Chinatown at all."40
Allen points to changes in his own community, the San Fernando Valley.41 By 1990, the region, he found in his landmark study, had among Southern California's largest concentrations of significant groups oddly categorized as "Anglo" such as Iranians and Armenians as well as Soviet Jews. The West San Fernando Valley, in particular, also began to develop significant pockets of Asian, particularly Vietnamese and Asian Indian, immigrants. The East Valley had also replaced East Hollywood as the center for the region's Thai community.42
Moreover, recent demographic trends in the Valley suggest it is becoming even more diverse. During the 1990s, the Valley's Caucasian population fell by 5.3 percent, while the Latino population increased by 43 percent, and the Asian population increased by 25.8 percent.43 The growth in both these populations, as well as that of African Americans, was considerably higher in the Valley than in the city as a whole.44
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