The Immigrant Growth Machine and the Political Opportunity Structures of Place in Koreatown, Los Angeles

The urban growth machine has become one of the seminal theories to explain how pro-growth coalitions among place entrepreneurs, land developers, public officials, and local institutions shape land use and redevelopment processes in American cities. However, the literature on immigrant involvement and the effects of overseas capital on growth politics in the current global era is underdeveloped. Based on fieldwork and interviews in Koreatown, Los Angeles, the paper examines how immigrant leaders and community stakeholders have worked to promote their economic growth agenda within the local governments and civic institutions of the LA metropolitan region amidst suburbanization, political barriers, and economic recessions. The research complicates the common view that overseas capitalists have merely delocalized land use/ redevelopment activities from local/ regional politics to foreign markets—thus rendering local community power irrelevant. Instead, it shows how the pace and direction of immigrant growth politics depends on the sophistication and embeddedness of ethnic brokers and institutions within local and regional political opportunity structure.