By Oriya Cohen and Maya Brennan, Housing Matters, May 8, 2021
Suburban communities across the United States are rapidly diversifying. As suburbia becomes less white, new residents have reshaped its form and use, expanding a particular version of the American dream to include their diverse histories and cultures. Asian Americans have been central to this process, overcoming a long history of exclusionary immigration policies and racially restrictive housing policies to stake their claim in suburbia.
This May, in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we spoke with Dr. Willow Lung-Amam, author of Trespassers? Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia and Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland’s Urban Studies and Planning program, to learn more about Asian American integration in the suburbs. In her book, Dr. Lung-Amam explores the Asian American experience of suburbanization in Fremont, California, one of the largest Asian American–majority suburbs in Silicon Valley and in the US, which is home to a multiethnic population that includes many highly educated Asian American professionals. The book captures the efforts of Asian Americans in Fremont to adopt and adapt elements of suburbs formerly occupied by largely white middle-class residents to reflect their social and communal traditions, values, and their new version of the American dream. But the book also shows how their adaptations—from the development of “Asian malls” to their construction of so-called “McMansions”–received significant pushback from non-Asian neighbors, planners, and policymakers.
At a time when contemporary political dialogue about immigration and diversity in the United States has stoked division within some communities and reaffirmed commitments to inclusion in others, the experience of Asian Americans in Fremont provides valuable lessons for building more culturally and racially inclusive communities.
Comments (0)