Putting Culture on the Map: Media Discourse and the Urban Growth Machine in Koreatown,Los Angeles

Abstract

In today’s postindustrial economy, the extent to which cities and neighborhoods can develop and promote their cultural assets has become a key strategy for maintaining competitiveness by attracting tourism, investment, and job and population growth. These cultural modes of urban development fit the logic of the urban growth machine, in that they foster ideologies of place to encourage investment and enhance the profitability of the local economic base. This article examines the often-neglected role of the local newspaper in this process by focusing on how the Los Angeles Times represents one neighborhood—Koreatown, Los Angeles—over an approximately forty-year period. Through critical discourse analysis, this article unpacks four discursive frames used by the local newspaper and analyzes how these frames commodify cultural communities for consumption by the urban elite.

Keywords

media discourse urban growth machine cultural economy gentrification urban development

Introduction

In today’s global, postindustrial economy, the extent to which cities can develop and promote their cultural assets has become a key strategy for maintaining competitiveness by attracting tourism, investment, and job and population growth. The economic value of culture is derived from the fact that, in a time where ethnic diversity and multiculturalism are accepted and valued realities of the contemporary city, notions of exotic and authentic cultural urban experiences are marketable assets for cities and communities. At the neighborhood level, a variety of studies have been done on how ethnic populations have operationalized notions of culture to transform or reappropriate urban places, attract tourism and development, and improve the local quality of life. In this sense, cultural modes of urban development fit the logic of the urban growth machine (Molotch 1976), in that they foster ideologies of place to encourage investment and enhance the profitability of the local economic base.

Using the urban growth machine as a theoretical framework, this article examines Koreatown, a neighborhood in Central Los Angeles with numerous overlapping and intersecting ethnic populations, to better understand the processes by which ethnic communities become marketable assets in the cultural economy. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, I examine the ways in which culture and community life in ethnic neighborhoods is represented by the local media. Specifically, this article asks, “How does media discourse represent ethnic communities?” Through critical discourse analysis of newspaper articles written about the case study neighborhood, this article finds that the local media adopts a series of discursive frames for describing the social, cultural, and economic life of the community. These discursive frames overlap and draw meaning from one another, and serve to exoticize ethnic diversity and notions of “authentic” cultural experiences, while also articulating what a successful, developed ethnic community should look and feel like. In doing so, they construct a territorial ideology that both encourages cultural production and attracts cultural consumption.

This article begins with a review of separate but related literatures on ethnic enclaves, the cultural economy, and the urban growth machine. The next section provides a discussion and recent history of the case study, Koreatown, Los Angeles, an ethnic enclave that has also emerged as a global cultural and nightlife destination. I then discuss my research methods and design, followed by a discussion of findings from an analysis of 235 news articles in the Los Angeles Times (henceforth, LA Times). I conclude with implications and potential directions for future research.

Ethnic Enclaves and the Cultural Economy

Over the last decades, culture has become an essential ingredient in the economic development strategies of many cities. In part, this is the result of the transition from an industrial to a postindustrial economy, local responses to globalization, and emerging environmental and lifestyle trends attracting a certain type of urban professional (Evans & Shaw 2004). Because immigrants are no longer the Other in today’s communities, but play an increasing role in the economic and cultural activity of today’s cities, the development and promotion of ethnic neighborhoods—for example, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Harlem—can act as a motor, or forum, for previously marginalized groups to gain economic and cultural capital by allowing them to attach their narrative to productive modes of community economic development. A variety of studies have been done on how ethnic populations have transformed or reappropriated urban places to create immigrant enclaves that reflect the new cultural patterns of everyday life and the new social organization of the community (Angotti 2012; Loukaitou-Sideris 2002; Main 2012; Sciorra 1996; Wherry 2011). Nevertheless, such cases of cultural urban revitalization are also prone to the commodification of culture, transforming ethnic communities into a kind of theme park, or a postmodern tourist attraction that results in racial voyeurism (Hoffman 2003b). As Wherry (2011, p. 140) said, “Too much orchestration indicates too much artifice; therefore, the greater the autonomy of the performers, the more authentic the performance.”

Critics abound that such strategies of place marketing and cultural revitalization benefit tourists and wealthy residents rather than improving the well-being of local public (Eisinger 2000, Harvey 1994, 2001; Ley 1996; Markusen 2006; Smith 1996; Zukin 1991, 1995). Cultural goods are expensive, and museum visitors and cultural tourists are largely from high-income sectors of society (Miles et al. 2003, p. 38). Others have demonstrated how local, state, and federal governments benefit from the globalization of immigrant communities more than residents themselves, as a result of foreign investment and urban redevelopment policy (Ling 1998). As a result, many argue that this new urban imperative—the race to attract tourists and a cosmopolitan, creative class—is simply an extension of neoliberal urban politics under a new guise, and creates a discourse that glosses over the social, cultural, and economic realities of post-Fordism (Häussermann and Colomb 2003; Leslie and Catungal 2012; McCann 2007; O’Callaghan 2010; Peck 2005; Scott 2006; Wilson and Keil 2008) that leave many immigrant communities in slum-like conditions.

Early work by Sharon Zukin (1982, 1996) has documented the emerging tastes and preferences of a new class of urban dwellers, desiring an authentic urban experience in an exotic destination characterized by cultural and economic diversity. This has informed the practices of planners and private investors in instilling notions of culture in the built environment. As an expanding population of individuals with higher levels of education and disposable income are moving to the cities from rural areas and especially the suburbs, city governments are increasing spending on culture and creating specialized agencies and policy-making bodies to provide additional cultural services for the growing public demand (Bianchini & Parkinson 1993). In addition, public officials and private developers have been influenced by the more recent writings of Richard Florida (2002), who argued that to achieve employment and population growth, cities should develop a culture of openness and cosmopolitanism that attracts workers of the “creative class.” Attracting such individuals requires that cities cultivate urban neighborhoods with clusters of small-scale music and performing art venues, art galleries, and trendy nightclubs, as well as a diversity of ethnic communities that market the city as a kind of global village.

However, while it may be well-established that ethnic communities are simply inputs, as are mega-projects and global sports events, in what some refer to now as the “entertainment machine” (Clark 2011), little attention has been paid to how exactly ethnic communities are commodified, and what actors play a role in this process. The aim of this article is to explore the inner working of this machine, but to do so requires honing in on specific actors and their roles within it.

Local Media and the Urban Growth Machine

Before Clark’s entertainment machine, Harvey Molotch’s (1976) theory of the “urban growth machine” demonstrated how local actors influence urban growth in pursuing their narrow objectives. In the urban growth machine, developers, realtors, and banks—all forming part of the “rentier” class—collaborate to increase the exchange value of land and property. Their actions are supported by auxiliary players such as universities, business associations, and the media. These auxiliary players engender and justify the objectives of the rentier class through the shaping of public discourse. In this sense, rather than viewing urban development as a result of natural inflows and outflows of capital and people, Molotch focuses on the agency of individuals and institutions with an emphasis on power.

He explains that the local newspaper, in particular, has a unique relationship to the growth machine. Unlike other institutional actors, which may have an interest in specific geographic patterns of growth, the newspaper’s interest is anchored to the aggregate growth of the city (Molotch 1976). As a result, the metropolitan newspaper achieves a “statesmanlike attitude” to the population, and is often regarded as a community leader in weighing in on, even arbitrating, local conflicts: “the paper becomes the reformist influence, the ‘voice of the community’” (Molotch 1976, p. 316).

Since then, many scholars have elaborated upon Molotch’s urban growth machine to explore how cities, whether through promotion of large-scale events or civic boosterism campaigns, employ discursive strategies for establishing or rebranding a place’s identity (Boyle 1997; Cox 1999; Cox and Mair 1988, 1989; Kenny 1995; Philo and Kearns 1993; Rofe 2004; Short 1999). By developing a local discourse that prioritizes the needs and wants of those currently living in a given urban area (what Cox called “the established”), the growth machine is able to unify the interests between capitalists on one hand and residents and workers on the other by mere virtue of their common location (Short 1999). The construction of these “territorial ideologies” relies on the commercialization of culture to establish notions of “modern” and “progress” that can be collectively shared across lines of race, class, and gender (Short 1999). Others note that boosterism campaigns involve two distinct discourses: a positive portrayal of the city to attract investors and promote development, and a negative, “shadow” discourse that shows what aspects of the city need to be contained, controlled, or ignored (Short 1999).

With the recent “cultural” turn in urban studies, scholars are paying increasing attention to the connection between social meanings attached to a particular place, often referred to as the “urban imaginary,” and larger scale physical and economic transformations (Huyssen 2008; Iwabuchi 2008; LiPuma and Koelble 2012; Zukin et al. 1998). Given the variety of actors involved in image creation and the marketing of place identities, it is intuitive that cultural symbols and representations can have a subjective impact on the ability to attract capital and new residents. Research has shown that real estate developers often manipulate cultural symbols of the industrial past of a factory building they wish to convert to an office park or art gallery (Kearns and Philo 1993; Watson 1991; Zukin 1982, 1995). Others show how depictions of cities in film and local media fail to present the nuanced dynamics of globalization, demographic change, and cultural flows, and instead, favor simple, monolithic representations of urban culture that will attract a wider audience of consumers (Iwabuchi 2008; LiPuma and Koelble 2012). In these case studies, representations of place have a material impact on urban growth and decline.

Among the actors involved in developing this local discourse, the newspaper is a major player in that it is both preeminently linked to a city, and its business is the symbolic construction of place. As a key actor in the promotion of place, a variety of studies have been done on how the newspaper tends to paint gentrification in a positive light, with its reporting on neighborhood change both normalizing and legitimizing this process (Brown-Saracino and Rumpf 2011; Dreier 2005; Lauria 1999; Parisi and Holcomb 1994; Wilson and Mueller 2004). Others have examined how the local media’s representation of gentrification serves to isolate and confuse low-income residents, thereby undercutting the possibility of their resistance (Wilson 1993). Focusing specifically on representations of gentrification, Loretta Lees (1996) demonstrated that the newspaper tends to avoid or ignore nuanced depictions of gentrification, and instead, selects images that construct binaries between gentrifier and gentrified, working class and middle class. Taken together, many scholars tend to criticize the local media—and newspaper specifically—for engendering, celebrating, and normalizing processes of neighborhood change. What is missing from these studies, however, is an examination of the process by which the local media commercializes culture to construct territorial ideologies.

Methodologically, the aforementioned studies employ either ethnographic research to offer an in-depth look at a variety of discursive practices in a given area over the life of one boosterism campaign or development project (Boyle 1997; Kenny 1995; Parisi and Holcomb 1994; Rofe 2004; Wilson 1993) or adopt forms of critical discourse analysis to look specifically at representations of neighborhood change in newspaper articles (Brown-Saracino and Rumpf 2011; Dreier 2005; Wilson & Mueller 2004). What is missing from these studies is a thorough examination of the discursive representations of one neighborhood over time. Such a close-up might demonstrate how territorial ideologies are developed through representations of ethnic communities and cultures. Moreover, because previous research focused representations of gentrification, their coding has relied upon media frames that use obvious metaphors or descriptors for gentrification (Brown-Saracino and Rumpf 2011; Wilson and Mueller 2004). By examining all articles written about one community, this study is able to unpack latent discourses and narratives that engender neighborhood change. Taking a longitudinal look at representations of place, this article illustrates how the aggregation of different frames of media discourse anoints the consumption of ethnic communities in the cultural economy, and fuels the machine.

Koreatown, Los Angeles

This article uses Koreatown, Los Angeles, as a case study to examine these dynamics. It is an ideal case for its swift transformation from a gateway community of immigrants to a globally recognized cultural and nightlife destination within only a few decades (K. Park and Kim 2008). And, as other scholars have demonstrated, Los Angeles in particular has attempted to brand itself as a “package of pluralism,” highlighting a rich ethnic mix that allows for unique cultural experiences (Short 1999). I therefore expected to find a plethora of local news articles written about the culture of this neighborhood compared with other sites.

Once known as a district for the early Hollywood elite, by the 1960s, the combination of racial tensions left over from the Watts Riots and a fear perpetuated by the media and popular culture initiated the out-migration of the White middle class from this part of Los Angeles (Avila 2006). With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, unprecedented numbers of immigrants to the United States from countries across East Asia arrived in Southern California from throughout the Pacific Rim. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, ethnic populations consolidated themselves in their businesses in major commercial areas while also bringing newer and greater diversity to the area. On Wilshire Blvd., the major commercial boulevard in the area, many of the large corporations on this street, such as Union Bank, Texaco, IBM, and Getty Oil, vacated their large office buildings by the early 1980s, thereby allowing Korean merchants and entrepreneurs to establish themselves on 6th St. and Wilshire (K. Park and Kim 2008).

By the 1990s, the majority of businesses along these two commercial strips were owned by Koreans. Even historic landmarks of this area, such as Chapman Plaza and the Brown Derby strip mall, were occupied by Korean businesses (Yu et al. 2004). Thus, by this time, it was commonly considered to be a Korean neighborhood, and in recognition of the neighborhood’s development, the city began to include its name (“Koreatown”) on highway exit signs. According to city records, today, Koreatown is bounded by Western Ave. to the west, Vermont Ave. to the east, Olympic Blvd. to the south, and 3rd St. to the north with a strip of Western Ave. extending several blocks north of Beverly Ave. (see Figure 1).¹

Image 1.

Korean-style tiled rooftops on Olympic Blvd. in Koreatown.

Figure 1.

Map of Koreatown.

In addition to holding the highest concentration of Koreans outside of Korea, Koreatown continues to be highly ethnically diverse compared with Los Angeles County (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Composition of race/ethnicity 1990 and 2015.

Although the 1992 Civil Unrest depressed land values in the area, Wilshire Center has undergone massive reinvestment in the past two decades, due in part to ongoing flows of money from South Korean corporations (K. Park and Kim 2008), efforts by the City’s Community Redevelopment Agency (Kwong 1992; Ong and Hee 1993), a density-allowing community plan, the expansion of the Metro line, and, as will be discussed later, the LA Times’ representation of the neighborhood as a destination for cultural consumption. Still, Koreatown remains a low-income neighborhood compared with the County (see Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Median income levels in Koreatown and Los Angeles County.

Today, Koreatown is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the country, and a sought-after nightlife and cultural destination for both Korean and non-Korean tourists and visitors (K. Park and Kim 2008; Yu et al. 2004). As can be expected, this has also led to signs of gentrification, with new bars, clubs, and other luxury amenities such as spas and sports centers clustering along its commercial corridors. Recent studies have documented that employees in the nightclub and entertainment industries are overrepresented on the Wilshire Center-Koreatown Neighborhood Council, whose goal is to help facilitate conditional use permits, liquor licenses, and business expansion in the district (K. Park and Kim 2008).

Having appeared as the subject of popular travel and food series, such as Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and the New York Times’ “36 Hours,” Los Angeles’ Koreatown has, like so many other ethnic neighborhoods before it, entered the stage of popular culture and discourse. The next section closely examines its transformation from immigrant enclave to a “culinary and cultural gem”—or rather, its ingestion into the urban growth machine (Rodell 2013).

Data and Method

This study uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyze how the use of language and framing in the media shaped the public’s understanding of the social and cultural landscape of multiethnic communities. CDA, which has its roots in critical linguistics, seeks to understand how particular discourses are produced (Fowler et al 1979; Fowler 1991; Van Dijk 1993, 1996). Previous CDA scholarship has demonstrated how discourse is not simply a by-product or reflection of social processes but also contributes to the production of these processes as well (Fairclough 1992). Urban planning researchers have similarly examined how the use of metaphors in policy discourse can promote particular agendas while marginalizing others (Coffey 2016). In this sense, the ways in which cities, neighborhoods, and communities are discussed in public platforms has a direct relationship with how policy makers evaluate the needs of certain groups.

Image 2.

High-rise developments on Wilshire Blvd., in the heart of Koreatown.

CDA methods, described below, were used to analyze LA Times² news articles written about Koreatown between 1979—when the first article on “Koreatown” appeared—and 2016. Using the newspaper’s archives and pulling any article mentioning “Koreatown,” I then selected articles in which Koreatown, as a neighborhood, was the explicit subject of the article, or for which the location of Koreatown played an important role in contextualizing the content of the article. In other words, articles that simply mentioned the name “Koreatown” in passing or in reference to isolated events (i.e., a car accident or fire in the neighborhood reported in police reports or advertisements for apartments or businesses) were excluded, whereas those that discussed events in relation to a discussion on current or changing conditions of the neighborhood were included. In total, I collected and analyzed 235 news articles.

After gathering the articles, I conducted a close reading of each to identify common frames through which the culture of the neighborhood was discussed, and I wrote short summaries of each article to identify recurring narratives or types of stories.³ Clear patterns of language use and representations of the community emerged. Once I had a bank of article types,⁴ I inferred four general frames that categorize the different ways in which the neighborhood’s culture is represented in the local news. Figure 4 lists the recurring narratives and their frame groupings (the frame groupings are on the right, and their constitutive narrative types are on the left).

Figure 4.

Article types and frames.

From here, I conducted a second round of analysis, whereby I reread the gathered articles and used open coding to assign them to one (or more) of the four themes. This allowed recurring frames to be quantified and examined over time and in relation to historical events. Similar to other scholars (Short 1999), I identified distinct discursive frames used to represent the city or, in this case, the neighborhood. Each of these frames is described in the next section, followed by a discussion of how these frames interact to serve the urban growth machine.

Frames of Media Discourse

While Molotch (1976, p. 316) posited that the local newspaper often serves as “the voice of the community,” this section interrogates the various ways in which the LA Times represents “the community” in Koreatown. In doing so, it unpacks how the urban growth machine relies on four distinctive frames—the immigrant enclave, the global village, the divided slum, and the exotic destination—to commodify ethnic neighborhoods.

Immigrant Enclave

Stories that represent Koreatown as an immigrant enclave appear as early as 1979, and appear the most frequently during this early history of the neighborhood. These “immigrant enclave” stories on Koreatown focus on the plight of immigrants and their families, as well as the successes of particular immigrant entrepreneurs. Other articles document the emergence and concentration of cultural markers that signify that certain ethnic groups are adapting the built environment for their own traditions and uses, including architecture, festivals, and the growth of ethnic markets. In doing so, this frame produces an image of the immigrant community as a site of cultural production, and thus from the perspective of actors in the growth machine, a site with high potential exchange value.

Stories within this frame document both the increasing spending power of local immigrants and their integration into the American metropolis. Such is clear in the titles of the news articles themselves: “New Middle Class Emerging in City—Persevering Asians” (Meyer 1980b), “Political Impact Just Beginning: Ethnic’s Influence, Particularly Latino, to Be Heavy (Meyer 1980c),” and “Minding their Own Businesses” (C. Lee 1991). One kind of story stands out for both its frequency and for the way in which it contributes to the public’s understanding of the culture of the community: articles written about the powerful influence that successful Korean American organizations, associations, and individuals had in starting new businesses or attracting investment, namely, Korean investment. As one article describes, “The Koreans buy bigger shops—then bigger one. Sacrifice becomes success” (Meyer 1980b). Oftentimes, this money went toward new commercial structures that hold Korean owned and operated business such as luxury spas, Korean beauty stores, and restaurants. In the words of many LA Times reporters, it is investment that elevates and displays the culture of the community that makes the neighborhood attractive to both Koreans and non-Koreans (Mascaro 1989; Newman 1990; Morrison 1985).

In repeatedly depicting the entrepreneurial success of Korean Americans, the local media associate immigrant integration with an immigrant community’s ability to demonstrate ownership over urban space. A number of articles that discuss the aspirations of other immigrant populations to establish their own neighborhood, a “Little India,” or “Cambodia Town,” quote local merchants who refer back to Koreatown as a model example to pursue, and wish to have their own neighborhood designation as well.⁵ As one Cambodian immigrant explained, “They have Chinatown, Koreatown . . . we’ve been living here for a long time. We deserve this” (Gorman 2007). According to the reporters, what makes these “neighborhoods” recognizable is the high concentration, and rapid clustering of businesses that are simultaneously ethnically owned, operated, and sometimes, architecturally themed. Such is evident by the first LA Times article where “Koreatown” is mentioned. The article, titled “Koreans Take to Street Armed with Brooms,” appeared in August of 1979, and told the story of a number of shop owners and residents who held a community cleanup. It states,

Koreatown—the name derived from Chinatown—extends east to west from Alvarado St. to Crenshaw Blvd, and north to south from 3rd St. to Pico Blvd. Actually, only a third of the residents in the area are of Korean descent, but they have put their stamp on the neighborhood with about 600 shops opened in the last half-dozen years. (Michaelson 1979)

More than a decade later, the same narrative frame persists:

Once a dusty row of storefronts in an aging commercial district, it is becoming a lively annex of Koreatown . . . signs printed in Korean characters hang in nearly every portal, and Korean-language billboards dominate the low rooftops. (Ramsay 1991)

These articles reveal the social construction of norms and values for how successful ethnic communities should look and feel. Within the context of Los Angeles, Koreatown, like Chinatown and Little Tokyo, is successful insofar as entrepreneurial and civic ethnic leaders seek physical improvements to the neighborhood that allow it to establish a spatialized identity in the eye of the public. Once dusty storefronts become a place called “Koreatown” not because of the dominant presence of Korean Americans but because of how they have represented their culture in the built environment. The public recognition that the local newspaper offers these communities by publishing articles praising their new neighborhood provides grounds for competition between ethnic groups to similarly try and construct their own designated neighborhood: a kind of “if they have one, so should we!” mentality. As Jonas and Wilson (1999) said, growth machines “speak not only for appropriate kinds of growth, but also about who should lead it, what their values should be, what the public’s values should be, and who are the locality’s potential civic and moral saviors.” Such spatialized identities, or cultural quarters (Roodhouse 2009) are fodder to those larger actors, such as real-estate interests and developers, who transform immigrant spaces into sites of entertainment (Clark 2011).

Global Village

Starting in the late 1980s, there is a sudden increase in articles focusing on the multiculturalism of Los Angeles, with journalists paying close attention to emerging communities where individuals from various countries around the world live in close proximity to one another. This “global village” frame perceives such multiethnic enclaves as “melting pots” of culture, often tied to the changing global economy. As one journalist quoted, “Los Angeles is the new Ellis Island . . . you can take a trip around the world without leaving Los Angeles County” (Larsen 1986). This coincides with the public’s growing taste for cultural products and experiences, part of what scholars refer to as a new cosmopolitan ideal that encourages urbanites to be a tourist in their own city (Binnie et al 2006). In this context, ethnic communities, and especially ethnically diverse communities, are reflections of the city’s ascendance to global city status.

The global village frame sees Los Angeles’ growing diversity as an indicator of its multiculturalism and progressiveness. Articles, such as “Kenmore Avenue: A Mini Melting Pot” (Hernandez 1990) and “Exploding Ethnic Populations Change Face of LA” (Meyer 1980a), celebrate Los Angeles’ new residents’ impacts on the sights and sounds of the city. While they do draw from demographic and economic statistics, their visual interpretations of “the community” are the most resonant. In describing one street that runs from Koreatown to East Hollywood, one author (Hernandez 1990) stated,

Here, where the four corners of the world rub shoulders, newcomers from Guatemala and Thailand live next door to more established Filipino, Chinese, and Mexican immigrants. They initially eye each other with suspicion . . . Over time, however, fear slowly gives way to mutual trust, as neighbors watch each other’s children grow and trade a “good morning” over back-yard fences.

As with others, this article praises the successes of the global village by identifying inspiring anecdotes: racially mixed children playing in the street, Latino families eating in Asian restaurants, or a Korean grocer speaking broken Spanish to customers. Stories about street artists creating murals that depict racial harmony, as in “‘The Living City Mural’ Modestly Claims all of LA County as its Subject” (Polhemus 1991), or “Koreatown Mural Evolves into Neighborly Project” (Berestein 1994), similarly paint positive images of diversity in the community, without delving into the lived realities of what are, in many cases, low-income neighborhoods.

According to the reporters and op-ed writers for the LA Times, Koreatown is a shining example of how overlapping immigrant populations not only coexist but also intermix. As has been shown, the high number and concentration of small businesses (primarily Korean but also Latino) and low-wage immigrant workers matched a high demand for cheap, unskilled labor with the necessary supply (Sanchez et al. 2012). The LA Times news desk discovered this meant that in many restaurants and grocery stores in Koreatown, the workers were forced to learn how to communicate to work with one another. The Times’ romanticization of interethnic relations persists:

It is a community where a Latino stock clerk might sing along with the radio in perfect Korean, where dozens of Korean immigrant merchants learn Spanish before English, and where young immigrants born half a world apart secretly admire each other and, sometimes, fall in love. (Fears 1998)

These stories reflect the public’s growing recognition of cultural diversity as an attractive social element, and feed into the desires of the creative class (Florida 2002). From art exhibitions on immigrant communities to grassroots coalitions seeking to promote “urban neighborhoods of the real Los Angeles” (LA Times 2001), they document a growing desire among public, private, and community groups to open up those parts of the city that were previously deemed inaccessible to new visitors, or “the mainstream.” In one op-ed article written by a White resident of Koreatown, the author attempted to break what she sees as unfair stereotypes of an immigrant neighborhood as being dangerous and dilapidated by claiming it is “webbed with poetry, charm, and high society” (King 1997). In reporting on the subtle pleasantries of her community, the author still managed to exoticize the presence of crime and the lifestyles of the working class:

I live in Koreatown, which is infested with gangs, teeming with street vendors and overrun with children . . . I have the most fun-loving neighbors imaginable. They set up makeshift bazaars on the sidewalk. They haul out a couple of tables and sell carpet sweepers, swamp coolers, telephones. They hang used-clothing displays from security fences. (King 1997)

Such perceptions of the community are the subject of critiques from Neil Smith (1996), who argued that this “urban pioneer” mentality, which reinterprets working-class neighborhoods as playgrounds for middle-class urban fantasies, engenders widespread gentrification. As several scholars note, emerging lifestyle trends encouraged the migration of young suburbanites to the inner city in search of urban “grit” and “authenticity” (Lloyd 2010, Zukin 2011). Los Angeles’ approach to promoting ethnic communities exemplifies this phenomenon: In 1995, a coalition of business owners, labor leaders, and artists created the Tourism Industry Development Council specifically to feed this growing appetite. As the LA Times noted,

The coalition has challenged the local tourism industry to undo some of the damage to the city’s image by promoting the sights, sounds and tastes in the urban neighborhoods of the “real” Los Angeles. Such a move, the group says, could dispel negative stereotypes while drawing some of the tourist money that flows into Los Angeles—$9.5 billion last year—into communities that have until now missed out on much of the action. (Berestein 1995)

From promoting the historic “jazz scene” in African-American communities, to the unique cultural identities of neighborhoods like Koreatown and East Los Angeles, the Council was one of the first groups to actively package Los Angeles’ diversity into consumable images and experiences. Within Koreatown specifically, many local groups, such as the Korean American Chamber of Commerce and Korean Churches for Community Development, would later mobilize resources for the purposes of creating Koreatown maps, “Welcome to Koreatown” signs, as well as themed architecture. According to them, such attractions break through a negative insularity that “keeps Koreatown an unknown territory for outsiders” (Kang 2003).

Given that multiculturalism is a sought-after characteristic for mobile, young urban professionals, diversity itself becomes a kind of neighborhood brand. This brand extracts new land value from the area as more and more individuals—whether as new residents, tourists, or nighttime revelers—come to experience the diversity for themselves. Yet, this representation of the community has the potential of distracting from the fact that many residents that constitute this diverse populace lack basic services and amenities. The public’s attention is drawn to the surface-level multiculturalism of a place, whereas systemic inequalities along racial and ethnic lines are ignored.

Divided Slum

While the global village frame represents the proximity of different groups through stories of intercultural dialogue and community building, the divided slum frame does the opposite: It purports to describe the negative outcomes of neighborhood diversity. The issues that Koreatown, like other low-income communities of color, faces, such as violent (and nonviolent) crime, slumlords, and juvenile delinquency, are placed within the context of racial tension and discrimination among residents. In other words, the struggles of the working class are tied to living in ethnically diverse communities.

Various articles describe landlords in Koreatown and surrounding neighborhoods discriminating against potential tenants based upon their race or ethnicity, which is a violation of California and federal laws. In fact, according to a spot-check audit conducted by the Hollywood/Mid-Los Angeles Fair Housing Council in 1988 and 1989, in which researchers submitted test applications marked as being sent by individuals of various races to apartment vacancies throughout the city, Koreatown registered the second highest percentage of racial discrimination. The LA Times speculated that this was also due to racial biases that arise when individuals from different backgrounds are placed in close proximity of one another⁶:

This mix is not always a happy one. Local authorities have noted higher numbers of hate crimes, with all groups represented among both victims and perpetrators. Strains have developed as Latinos moved into neighborhoods that were once largely black and as Asians have moved into communities that were once largely Anglo and Latino. Black customers have picketed Korean market owners. Clashes between Asians and Latinos and between blacks and Latinos are brewing in the political arena too. So perhaps over housing should come as no surprise. (Pastnernak 1991)

Articles in this frame also explore poor working conditions as they relate to ethnic diversity. Numerous stories about wage theft—when an employee does not pay workers the wages they are rightfully owed for work they have performed—appears in the early 2000s, shortly after the nonprofit organization KIWA (known back then as the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates) became active in a number of high-profile campaigns (Cuza 2000; Kang 1998; McDonnell 2000).⁷ Similar to the issues of housing bias, some immigrant entrepreneurs were unfamiliar with California labor laws regarding meal breaks and overtime, resulting in stolen wages. As one KIWA organizer said, “Many restaurant owners practice the Korean way of paying monthly salaries, not hourly wages . . . They didn’t keep time cards and keep overtime records because they were doing business like they do back home” (Kang 1998). Diversity—which the global village frame romanticizes—is presented here as a contributor to social conflict, even poverty.

Another frequently cited issue in Koreatown is the lack of a unified community voice and the relationship that this has to broader race relations. Many articles document the struggle among immigrant populations to engage in local affairs because of linguistic or cultural divides. In some instances, this leads to a distrust between residents and the police (Feldman 1991; Meyer 1991), and in others, it creates tensions between neighboring immigrant populations (Moffat 1992). In more rare cases, these cultural barriers lead to crime, even murder (Ferrell 2000). For example, in one op-ed, the author wrote,

the basic reason we live in fear and paranoia of one another is because we do not know one another. We do not understand our different practices and cultures because we have not told each other what they mean to us. (Marquis 1996)

Regarding race and crime, articles within this frame are shaped significantly by the 1992 civil unrest in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. Images of the clashes between primarily African-American rioters and Korean business owners were widely distributed in local, as well as national, media channels, raising public concerns about the nature of race relations in diverse Los Angeles. As can be expected, there is a sudden spike in the number of articles written around 1992 in this frame, as well as others. In a sense, Koreatown becomes the inspiration for conversation and debate around race in the City of Los Angeles. Several LA Times articles, as well as op-ed pieces, argue (or warn) that the riot may have signaled the demise of the dream of multiculturalism in places such as Koreatown (Kwon 1993; Marks 2000; Marquis 1996). As one author stated, “North America is racially segregated. [Ethnic groups] are really separate worlds, so this is not a melting pot. It’s a mosaic, a very loose mosaic that’s a poor work of art” (Kwon 1993). Nevertheless, articles in this frame continue into the 2000s, discussing ongoing struggles with crime (Kang and Blankstein 2006), housing discrimination (Glover 2009), and lingering poverty despite the area’s “revival” (Watanabe 2007).

Given that this frame depicts an antithetical condition than the global village frame, how are we to interpret their relationship in constructing a territorial ideology? Previous research has argued that negative media representations of low-income minority neighborhoods merely seek to astonish readers with tales of crime and deviancy (Parisi and Holcomb 1994), or compound urban problems by offering a pessimistic view of the city in which neither people nor policy can make a difference (Dreier 2005). However, more recent work has shown connections between interethnic and intergenerational tensions in ethnic neighborhoods and the desire by local residents to improve the neighborhood through the development of cultural amenities (Collins 2016). In this sense, when viewed alongside both the immigrant enclave and global village frames, the divided slum frame depicts an inner-city gateway community in which escaping poverty requires establishing or contributing to one’s own ethnic neighborhood through entrepreneurial pursuits. In other words, the divided slum frame identifies the “problem”—a community of diffuse and divided immigrant residents—that can be solved by leveraging local culture as a strategy of neighborhood revitalization. At the same time, this frame is inextricably tied to the final frame, the “exotic destination,” in that together, they help construct a “landscape of happy violence” (Smith 1996), in which social ills, such as poverty and crime, as well as ethnic diversity, are seen as desirable aspects of a gritty, urban experience to a gentrifying elite. To generate an appetite among the larger forces of gentrification, such as real estate brokers and developers, these stories of crime and destitute conditions in the multiethnic neighborhood are accompanied by stories of the hidden secrets of the area: restaurants, bars, and other cultural amenities that are available to only those daring enough to look.

Exotic Destination

The final frame is that of the “exotic destination,” in which the multiethnic neighborhood is cast as a place to be explored and discovered and where “authentic” cultural experiences are available to the daring visitor. According to Zukin, urban pioneers consider something authentic when it has clear and unique origins, such as traditional ethnic cuisines and working-class histories, or new beginnings, often represented by the creation of new sidewalk cafés, refurbished lofts, and other commodified urban spaces. For the LA Times, this is often played out in reviews of ethnic restaurants, as well as journalistic reporting on seemingly exotic spatial experiences in areas dominated by immigrants.

In describing Koreatown, articles in this frame appear in the late 1980s from food writers who aim to entice their readers by claiming to have discovered “original” and “exotic” dishes that are in seemingly hard-to-reach places. Because the restaurant signs and menus may lack English translation (especially those in Korean), some articles attempt to instruct the reader on how best to carry themselves as an ignorant outsider to ethnic cuisine such as in “Korean 101” (Gold 1990). At times, the writer is literally instructing the reader,

What you eat in a Korean tofu restaurant: tofu. Also rice and a couple different kinds of kimchee . . . the thing to drink here is chilled barley tea served in soup bowls, which is very refreshing and is included in the price of the lunch. (Gold 1991)

The writers can also seem ignorant themselves: “To Koreans, red pepper must be as basic as salt . . .” (Hansen 1989a). Almost always, the writers emphasize the secretiveness, or exoticism, of the place they are visiting: “. . . amid the babble of mysterious signs . . .” (Blandford 1991), “. . . tucked away on the second story . . .” (J. H. Lee 1990), “. . . in a shopping center on the far eastern fringe . . .” (Hansen 1989b). Taken together, the core of this frame is in the relationship between the writer and the place: The writer presents himself or herself as a pioneer exploring uncharted territories, and the place is presented as a foreign land.

A key figure in this framing of Los Angeles, specifically with regard to food and dining, is LA Times journalist Jonathan Gold. In fact, in his column, “Counter Intelligence,” Gold actively sought out lesser known ethnic cuisines and dishes across Los Angeles County. Nearly a decade of articles was then compiled and released in a book, titled Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles (2000). Gold asserted that his writing was meant to celebrate the diverse cultures of Los Angeles, and to inspire Angelenos to appreciate them through food. With his writing about Koreatown, Gold paid particular attention to exploring the cuisines of overlapping immigrant communities, in recognition that this neighborhood is not simply “Korean” (“In the Middle of Koreatown, Great Chinese,” “Ole Mole,” “Viva la Brasa”). With that said, Gold’s fondness for Korean food is widely documented, and culminated in a 2005 article in LA Weekly (a weekly publication for which he also wrote) titled “Koreatown’s Top 40” (Gold 2004), which was later updated in 2012, as “Jonathan Gold’s 60 Korean Dishes that Every Angeleno Should Know” (Gold 2012). In describing Koreatown, Gold (2012) said,

. . . home to a reputed 850 places to eat and drink, as well as scores of nightclubs, coffeehouses, billiard parlors, supermarkets and bookstores, Koreatown has matured into one of the great nightlife districts in the world, a veritable restaurant paradise shoehorned right into Los Angeles’ urban core.

Gold’s rise to near celebrity status as a food writer and cultural critic has granted his food writing with real economic power in attracting visitors to Koreatown. Many restaurant owners have indicated that, after he published a review of their restaurant, their revenue more than doubled (Becker and Gabbert 2016). While other LA Times food writers may not have the same individual impact, they participated equally in the documentation of the city’s ethnic cuisine. In 2001, the newspaper launched a series called “Authentic Ethnic” that would feature restaurant reviews from a handful of writers and critics.

By 2001, the number of articles in this frame had increased significantly, as articles appeared not only describing the exotic food scene of the Koreatown area, but its “unique” nightlife amenities as well, from karaoke and 24-hour spas to karaoke and “booking” clubs.⁸ In some instances, orientalism dominates the narrative:

But Southern Californians can experience many grooming and beauty rituals, some of which have yet to be “discovered” by posh Westside salons, in settings that evoke their origins—our thriving ethnic communities where the treatments are part of the social and spiritual fabric. Neighborhood spas throughout the city offer steam baths, saunas and scrubs that remain virtually unchanged after import. (Valli 2005)

Words like “spiritual” or “enchanted,” describing the aisles of ethnic supermarkets (Hansen 2005), serve to not only help sell these products and services (through unabashed orientalism), but to treat immigrant communities as experiential commodities in the cultural economy. In other words, to travel across the city to Koreatown and visit an ethnic supermarket, walk through the aisles and purchase an imported food product, is to have a unique, authentic experience. As previous scholars have noted, entertainment, consumption, and amenities are inherently political and increasingly drive urban policy (Clark 2011). Thus, by casting a light of exoticism on the amenities in a particular area, the local media helps channel consumer activity, thereby indicating to larger actors that such cultural amenities should be further exploited economically such as by concentrating residential and commercial development nearby.

As mentioned, there are certainly benefits to the increased attention by outsiders to ethnic small businesses. On one hand, the food writing of Gold and others succeeds on an anthropological level: They provide a window into the microcultures of Los Angeles’ immigrant communities, which feed into the new tastes and preferences of urbanites. On the other hand, these stories also succeed in packaging culture into consumable experiences for a decidedly outsider group of individuals. The benefits of this are clear—new outsiders spend money at local restaurants and businesses and inject new activity into the local economy. With that said, food writers that encourage cultural tourism through their reporting have real economic and social influence over the communities they are writing about, and there are power dynamics inherent to their relationship and the relationship of their readers with the places they visit and eat in. They are a part of the same urban growth machine that sparks gentrification. To dine locally is one thing, but how might these same outsiders support the community in other ways? Those spaces in the community that do not or cannot be reviewed by cultural critics, or are not praised by media reporters as being culturally important, are ignored, and likely become the first targets for urban redevelopment.

The ways in which these articles frame the social, cultural, and economic realities of Koreatown demonstrate the power that the local media has in commodifying ethnic communities. More importantly, when looked at longitudinally (see Figure 5), it is clear that these narratives are codependent on one another.

Figure 5.

News article frames by year.

As the chart demonstrates, the major spikes in total articles occur when all four frames are present, rather than one or two frames dominating the newspaper’s stories. This illustrates that these frames depend on one another for their meaning and strength. The immigrant enclave frame defines what it means for an ethnic population to build a successful ethnic neighborhood, and the divided slum frame documents the negative outcomes of private and public disinvestment, and identifies the problem for developers and entrepreneurs to address through strategies of neighborhood revitalization. At the same time, it helps construct the image of the gritty urban core, an increasingly attractive place for incoming suburbanites with a taste for the urban “frontier.” This frame helps incite the next, in which the multiethnic neighborhood is described as a global village and exotic destination, casting urban spaces as uncharted territories ripe for discovery by a wealthy, cosmopolitan elite.

Thus, in the context of the postindustrial cultural economy, the newspaper’s reporting on the social, cultural, and economic conditions of ethnic communities inevitably produces an urban imaginary (Huyssen 2008) that both incentivizes cultural production (through the immigrant enclave and divided slum frame) and attracts cultural consumption (through the global village and exotic destination frames). As others have noted, journalism is less an objective form of inquiry as it is a type of storytelling with its own interpretive conventions (Hackett 1984; MacDougal 1988a, 1988b; Sigal 1973). In this sense, local reporters, unbeknownst to themselves, are granted enormous power in shaping not only the public’s perception of urban space but how they interact with and within it. Or, as Huyssen (2008, p. 3) put it,

An urban imaginary is the cognitive and somatic image which we carry within us of the places where we live, work, and play. It is an embodied material fact. Urban imaginaries are thus part of any city’s reality, rather than being only figments of the imagination. What we think about a city and how we perceive it informs the ways we act in it.

And, in the context of globalization and information technology, media’s role in shaping the urban growth machine is perhaps stronger than ever before.

While these frames are produced and perpetuated by the local media, the scale of their impact is much greater. For the LA Times’ local readership, this ability to frame and reframe neighborhoods and locales produces an intracity image that either attracts or deters residents or entrepreneurs from entering the area, often from other neighborhoods or areas in Los Angeles County. However, for the newspapers’ national or international readers, these frames may produce a multiplier effect, as other online newspapers or blogs post summaries or recaps of LA Times articles, further circulating these frames to a wider audience. For example, for a widely renowned and respected food journalist such as Jonathan Gold to say that Koreatown has become one of the “great nightlife districts of the world” will surely catch the attention of investors and urban professionals in other parts of the world seeking new destinations for their economic or cultural exploits. The New York Times’ report on Koreatown is evidence of a ripple effect created by these frames. Rather than appeal to Angeleno/as, this article seeks to attract a decidedly New York City sensibility:

As the most densely packed part of Los Angeles, it’s also one of the city’s most strollable, with Art Deco buildings and palm-lined boulevards. With the influence of three generations of Korean and Latino immigrants, these once-mean streets have become a picturesque and prosperous “Blade Runner”-ish warren of ethnic culinary hot spots imbued with an East-meets-West sense of fun. (Jones 2015)

These frames of media discourse are, therefore, not confined to the local municipal newspaper, but are adopted and disseminated by media outlets in faraway places. While these immigrant communities have arguably always been “strollable” and certainly “palm-lined” to its residential population, these newly discovered cultural quarters are repackaged and articulated as exotic landscapes that appeal to a highly mobile leisure class planning their next getaway.

Conclusion

This research highlights how, in the context of the cultural economy, the newspaper is granted notable power and ease in commodifying ethnic communities and in doing so, constructing a territorial ideology that serves the urban growth machine. These findings are important for two reasons. On one hand, while previous studies have shown how the local media narrates neighborhood change in a way that avoids nuance and legitimizes gentrification (Brown-Saracino and Rumpf 2011; Kenny 1995; Parisi and Holcomb 1994; Wilson and Mueller 2004), little attention has been paid to how the local media describes ethnic communities. In doing so, this research draws attention to how the newspaper can reduce urban spaces and amenities into superficial tropes that may appeal to their readers but rely on fetishizing, even orientalizing, immigrant culture. On the other hand, it shows that the newspaper’s appraisal of ethnic neighborhoods as sites of civic and commercial entrepreneurialism lays a foundation for competition among other immigrant communities to similarly try and establish their own neighborhood through business clustering and themed architecture. That such practices are exploited by the urban growth machine—as the cultural revitalization of ethnic spaces increases the attractiveness of and property values in a given area—reveals that the local newspaper does not merely act with a “statesman-like attitude” to the local population (Molotch 1976), but rather as an instigator and motivator in intracity competition.

In this context, these findings call for further critique of the municipal newspaper as not only a core actor in the urban growth machine but also in its capacity to construct urban imaginaries that shape the public’s perception of other cultures and communities in their city. While reporters may hold good intentions in writing stories about “authentic” restaurants, diverse neighbors, and struggling families in racial and ethnic minority neighborhoods, the stories they tell project images and symbols that are the currency of the postindustrial economy, and create new exchange values over urban space. Paradoxically, this may ultimately lead to the displacement of the very communities to which reporters are trying to connect their readers as larger institutional actors, such as public agencies, private investors, and developers, exploit the increasing land values. As recent scholarship on Koreatown also demonstrates, community stakeholders respond to the neighborhood change implicated by the urban growth machine in a variety of ways, both to foster or resist the representations discussed here (Collins 2018).

These findings suggest a number of important areas for future research. First, this project could be enhanced by a comparative analysis that examines the discursive framing of two or more ethnic communities in the same city (or different cities) to see how other endogenous factors—such as income levels or residential tenure—influence the ways in which some ethnic neighborhoods are framed in the media. Second, an issue only mentioned in passing here but one with profound implications is the role of nontraditional media—such as blogs, social media, and online newspapers and magazines—in commodifying urban spaces and fueling the growth machine. Scholars of new media could elaborate on this study with a big data analysis of online representations of place, and examine to what extent these findings might apply to other ethnic neighborhoods in other cities. A comparative discourse analysis of both mainstream news sources and local ethnic media outlets might also yield a better sense of what agency ethnic residents have in representing their communities, and whether these representations challenge or support the discursive frames discussed here. To a degree, this research points to the importance of decentralized and democratic forms of journalism that counter the hegemony of large, institutionalized municipal newspapers—to the extent that stories come from within the communities being described. However, without further analysis of how different discourses interact and counteract one another, and how we might empower the voices of those communities marginalized by the urban growth machine, the inevitable and conspicuous packaging of local cultures for the creative and leisure classes of contemporary cities will only continue.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Brady Collins is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. His research interests include community and economic development, ethnic enclaves, gentrification, and spatial politics.

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