Ethnicity in an Immigrant Gateway City: The Asian Condition in Houston

ABSTRACT:

The analysis explores the evolving condition of Houston’s Chinese community into the early 21st century and its uncertain role within the local economy. Through a historical analysis, it examines Chinese immigration into Houston and the evolving and changing spatial settlements of Chinese immigrants in the city, showing the precarious nature of Houston Chinese neighborhoods. A quantitative analysis then examines whether disparities in economic prosperity are evident between Asian and White growth neighborhoods within Harris County between 1980 and 2000, when ethnic diversity was viewed as an important element of Houston’s new economic development strategy. A principal components analysis (PCA) and a k-means clustering technique are conducted on census tract data to identify neighborhood types and to analyze changes in neighborhood characteristics. The quantitative analysis reveals that the city’s promotion and celebration of ethnic diversity, and the extensive investment by Houston’s Asians into their neighborhoods, did not translate into improving economic prospects for Asian neighborhoods within Houston.

Notes

The high-growth White neighborhoods contain tracts that experienced a larger percent increase in the White population relative to Harris County while the high-growth Asian neighborhoods experienced a larger increase in the share of tract population that are Asian relative to the increase in Harris County.

Old Chinatown boundaries based on a map from Baird ().

The Magnuson Act (the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943) allowed Chinese immigration into the United States and permitted citizenship to Chinese already residing in the country.

The Houston metropolitan area is the primary metropolitan statistical area (PMSA) as defined by the Federal Office of Budget and Management in 1993 and used by the U.S. Census Bureau to report data for the 2000 Census. Although the federal government discarded the PMSA definition following the 2000 Census, the authors use the same geographic area for reporting the 2010 data for comparability.

Although contemporary audiences would have referred to this district as Chinatown as well, the authors adopt Old Chinatown, one of the former local designations for this area, to distinguish it from the newly created Chinatown in southwest Houston.

The locations for the public art were derived from the City of Houston’s () Municipal Art Inventory. Installations were mapped by the authors.

Since census tracts do not coincide with city boundaries, we use census tracts for the city and surrounding county (Harris County, TX) for this study.

Components account for approximately 70% of the variation in the data.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony Knapp

Anthony Knapp is a Statistician at the United States Census Bureau’s Population Division. Prior to joining the Population Division, he was a geographer at the bureau’s Geography Division and a geographic specialist at the Regional Census Center in Dallas, Texas. His research interests include urban development, the urban built environment, ethnic neighborhoods, immigration, and studying urban processes, especially at the neighborhood level. He is currently researching methods for estimating foreign-born immigration into the United States and working on the annual population estimates for the nation, states, and counties.

Igor Vojnovic

Igor Vojnovic is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Michigan State University, where he also holds appointments in the School of Planning, Design and Construction and the Global Urban Studies Program. His main area of research focuses on urban (re)development processes, involving a range of issues, including urban governance, gentrification, infrastructure investment, physical planning, urban design, and environmental impacts of urban form. His work has been published in journals such as Environment and Planning A, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, Journal of Urban Design, Urban Geography, Journal of Urban Affairs, Cities, Ecological Economics, Applied Geography, Health and Place, GIScience and Remote Sensing, and Environmental Conservation.