AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community

Little Tokyo is a unique case exemplifying the evolving nature of community economic development in Los Angeles. In-depth interviews with key community leaders identify the need for the importance of a place-specific, contextually relevant development approach in order to maintain an ethnic presence in the neighborhood. Faced with new threats of gentrification, the complications of a global economy, and a new phase of transit-oriented development, community members are banking on a multi-sports complex in Little Tokyo to rejuvenate a sense of cultural home space for the now geographically dispersed Japanese Americans.