Journal of Urban History 1–40 © 2015 SAGE Publications Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0096144215610773 juh.sagepub.com Article Design Assimilation in Suburbia: Asian Americans, Built Landscapes, and Suburban Advantage in Los Angeles’s San Gabriel Valley since 1970 Becky M. Nicolaides 1,2 and James Zarsadiaz 3 Abstract Ethnic suburban settlement has shaped suburban landscapes in contrasting ways. On one end are ethnoburbs, where ethnic groups used spatial politics to assert their rights of ethnic expression in the landscape. On the other—less noticed—end are places where ethnic settlers arrived en masse, and their presence was scarcely visible. This article focuses on the latter, towns where ethnic suburbanites consented to existing design mores—what we term design assimilation. Using case studies from Asian American suburbs of the west and east San Gabriel Valley, we explore the history of places where Anglo design aesthetics persisted in the midst of profound demographic change. Multiple factors created and protected these landscapes, including stringent regulatory cultures of these suburbs, white political action, accommodations by builders, and Asian American consent. Asian suburbanites supported these landscapes for aesthetic, nostalgic, political, and economic reasons, including the belief that American landscape aesthetics conveyed a social distinction that positioned them above those around them—including other Asians in the ethnoburbs. Our work shows how suburban advantage has been reinforced by new waves of immigrant suburbanites, in ways that reflect the inequities and spatial expression of globalization itself. This work offers a new perspective on immigrant suburbanization and its interface with suburban “landscapes of privilege.” Keywords immigrant suburbanization, suburb, ethnoburb, Asian Americans, San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles, globalization, San Marino, Diamond Bar, Rowland Heights, design assimilation What happens when places with long-standing design traditions confront radical social transfor- mation? This is a phenomenon unfolding over broad swaths of our metropolitan areas, and it is especially striking in suburbs receiving large numbers of immigrants. The San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles offers a vivid example. As a prime destination of Asian immigration, the suburban 1 Huntington–USC Institute on California and the West, Los Angeles, CA, USA 2 University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA 3 University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA Corresponding Author: Becky M. Nicolaides, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, Huntington Library, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108. Email: becky.nicolaides@outlook.com 610773JUH XX X 10.1177/0096144215610773Journal of Urban HistoryNicolaides and Zarsadiaz research-article 2015 by guest on November 19, 2015 juh.sagepub.com Downloaded from