21. The program originally involved the Federal Government providing low-income loans to developers who were willing to construct apartment buildings that would be reserved for low-income residents, at least over the next 25 years. The low-interest mortgages were intended to allow developers to make money even though the rents were lower than market value. The problem, at least for those advocating affordable housing, was that the owners found a loophole in the Federal law in the 1980s, allowing them to prepay their mortgages and convert affordable housing units to marketrate housing (Nyden and Adams, 1996). 22. Alderman Helen Shiller's presence in the community is often credited with Uptown's protection of low-income residents. Her election as Alderman in 1987 was the culmination of a long fight for representation of low-income people (Bennett, 1991). 23. The recent Sun Plaza development is an excellent example of this economic development activity. The project, organized by a local developer, is located in what was a long-vacant car dealership lot and is home to a variety of businesses aimed at a variety of markets. For example, Sun Plaza contains a national chain video store, a pediatric clinic (the only one in the area), an Asian market, a pizzeria, and other smaller stores. 24. Only 19 of Chicago's 77 community areas experienced population growth during the 1980s. Chicago Lawn was one of them. 25. Inclusivity movements are not new to Chicago Lawn. Pacyga et al. (1991) report the Southwest Committee on Peaceful Equality was founded as early as 1963 and advocated openness for many years. The presence of this organization indicates that there has been a core of residents affirming racial and ethnic diversity in Chicago Lawn. 26. SWCCP also was responsible for the publication and mass distribution of a brochure titled "Christians in their Neighborhood," which outlines moral, social, and practical reasons for neighborhood involvement and diversity. 27. The GSWDC is a community development group dedicated to the revitalization of Chicago Lawn. 28. This survey was composed of 52 close-ended questions and was administered to 822 residents of Gage Park, Chicago Lawn, West Elsdon, and West Lawn, all on the Southwest Side. 29. This is not meant to imply that an all-Black West Englewood is less than a diverse community. Rather it refers to the historical experience of this area. Rapid racial turnover in West Englewood was followed by disinvestment in the community, leaving the community economically devastated. 30. Carole Goodwin's (1979) study of Oak Park and Austin is a good example of this situation. 31. See Jackson's discussion of the real estate industry's co-optation of lending assumptions and practices (1985). 32. Particularly with the collapse of People's Housing, an organization working to provide affordable housing in Rogers Park, there is a need for new or existing organizations to fill this void. References Bennett, Larry. 1991. "Uptown: Port of Entry, Hotbed of Movements, Contested Territory." Report submitted to the Policy Research Action Group. Chicago, Illinois. Biles, Roger. 1995. Richard J. Daley: Politics, Race, and the Governing of Chicago. Burgess, Ernest W. 1928. “Residential Segregation in American Cities." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 140 (November): 105–15. Chicago Daily News. 1959. “Nasty Bag of Fear: Tricks Used to 'Bust Up' Blocks," Chicago Fact Book Consortium. 1984. Local Community Fact Book: Chicago Metropolitan Area. Chicago: University of Illinois at Chicago. Cutler, Irving. 1982. Chicago: Metropolis of the Mid-Continent. Third Edition. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. Denton, Nancy. 1994. “Are African Americans Still Hypersegregated?," in Residential Apartheid: The American Legacy. CAAS: University of California, Los Angeles. Farley, Reynolds and William Frey. 1994. “Changes in the Segregation of Whites from Blacks," American Sociological Review 59(1):23-45. Fremon, David. 1991. “Rapid Transit From Loop to Midway: New Line Means Change for Chicago's Southwest Side," Illinois Issues, August and September, p. 33–36. Goodwin, Carole. 1979. The Oak Park Strategy: Community Control of Racial Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gronbjerg, Kirsten A., Katy Crossley, Lorri Platek, Natalya Zhezmer, and Toni Migliore. 1993. "Rogers Park: A Tradition of Diversity-Laying the Foundation for Economic Development." Project in Applied Sociology Prepared for Devcorp North. Chicago: Loyola University Chicago. Helper, Rose. 1969. Racial Policies and Practices of Real Estate Brokers. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Jackson, Kenneth T. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford. Kras, Frank. 1991. “Matchmaker Real Estate is Fined for Racial Steering," Southwest News-Herald, April 16. Maly, Michael T. 1998. “Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Select U.S. Urban Neighborhoods, 1980 to 1990." Unpublished dissertation. Chicago: Loyola University Chicago. May. Maly, Michael T. and Philip Nyden. 1994. "Racial Residential Diversity and Segregation in Chicago 1980-1990." Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Meetings in Los Angeles. Massey, Douglas and Nancy Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Molotch, Harvey. 1972. Managed Integration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nyden, Philip, Diane Binson, Sr. Mary Paul Asoegwu, Roger Atreya, Ronald Gulotta, Gayle Hooppaw Johnson, Vijay Kamath, Maryann Mason, John Norton, Layla Suleiman, Jerry Vasilias. 1991. Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Diversity in Uptown's Subsidized Housing: A Case Study of its Present Character and Future Possibilities. Chicago: Loyola University Chicago. Nyden, Philip and Joanne Adams. 1992. Our Hope for the Future: Youth, Family, and Diversity in the Edgewater and Uptown Communities. Chicago: Loyola University Chicago. Nyden, Philip, Larry Bennett, Joanne Adams. 1993. Diversity and Opportunity in a Local Economy: Community Business in Edgewater and Uptown. Chicago: Loyola University Chicago, Organization of the Northeast. Nyden, Philip and Joanne Adams. 1996. Saving Our Homes: The Lessons of Community Struggles to Preserve Affordable Housing in Chicago's Uptown. Report completed by researchers at Loyola University Chicago in collaboration with Organization of the Northeast. Pacyga, Dominic A., Carolyn Heinrich, and Madelon Pratt Smith. 1991. "Southwest Park, Robert, E. Burgess, and R. McKenzie. 1925. The City. Chicago: University of Ryan, Nancy. 1998. "Marquette Park Enters New Life." Chicago Tribune. January 27. Section 2. Saltman, Juliet. 1990. A Fragile Movement. New York: Greenwood Press. Squires, Greg, Larry Bennett, Kathleen McCourt, and Philip Nyden. 1987. Chicago: Race, Class, and the Response to Urban Decline. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Taub, Richard P., Jan Durham, and Garth Taylor. 1984. Paths of Neighborhood Change: Race and Crime in Urban America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. United States Bureau of the Census. 1990. Census of Population and Housing: Summary tape file 3A. Welter, Gail Danks. 1982. The Rogers Park Community: A Study of Social Change, Community Groups, and Neighborhood Reputation. Chicago: Center for Urban Policy, Loyola University Chicago. Woodstock Institute. 1994. Focusing In: Indicators of Economic Change in Chicago's Neighborhoods. Chicago, Illinois. Chapter 8: Jackson Heights, Philip Kasinitz Hunter College and the City University of New York Mohamad Bazzi Newsday Randal Doane Queens College Some communities sustain ethnic diversity by design. Others have it thrust upon them. Over the past one-quarter century, Jackson Heights, a middle-class community in northern Queens, New York, has become one of the Nation's most ethnically mixed neighborhoods. Little in the area's earlier history prepared it to play this role, and few of its longterm residents ever consciously chose to live in a diverse community. Yet despite the massive in-migration of Latinos and Asians, Jackson Heights has not experienced the rounds of panic selling and disinvestment that so commonly accompany racial transition. Today White, Latino, and Asian, as well as middle- and working-class residents, live side by side, not always in harmony, but united in a commitment to make their neighborhood work. The ethnic variety that one can see, hear, smell, and taste on the streets of Jackson Heights Jackson Heights is a middle-class community of approximately 85,000 people in northern Queens. Bounded by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway on the west, the Grand Central Expressway on the north, Junction Boulevard on the east, and Roosevelt Avenue on the south, Jackson Heights has become, over the past 25 years, home to immigrants from literally dozens of Asian and Latin American nations. More than one-half of its population is now foreign born. At the same time, the community has retained a significant Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research • Volume 4, Number 2 • 1998 Cityscape 161 portion of its older, middle- and working-class White population. It is also home to a longstanding, substantial gay community. Unlike many neighborhoods experiencing racial and ethnic change, Jackson Heights' overall population has increased since the 1960s, resulting in rising demand that has stabilized and, in some cases, increased commercial and residential property values. These changes have come to Jackson Heights with remarkable speed. In 1960 the community was nearly 98.5 percent White. As late as 1970, when Whites constituted 87.4 percent of the population, Jackson Heights was still known as a bastion of native-born, middle- and working-class residents-a place of suburban sensibilities despite urban densities. By 1990 Jackson Heights was a multiethnic community with no clear majority: 39.8 percent White, 41.3 percent Hispanic, and 16 percent Asian and other. (Many residents believe that the Asian share of the population has increased since that time.) The census category of Hispanic does not begin to capture the population's diversity. Jackson Heights is home to substantial numbers of Colombians (the largest and most visible single group), Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Argentines, Mexicans, and Salvadorans. In contrast, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans (New York City's largest Latino populations) are present in smaller numbers. The Asian population includes a significant number of Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis. A Little India shopping area has developed along 74th Street, drawing south Asian customers from throughout the metropolitan area to sari shops and jewelry stores. There is also a growing east Asian population, probably an overflow from New York's second Chinatown, Flushing, to the east. Most of Jackson Heights' local community groups and activists consider the neighborhood's diversity to be an amenity. They often express the idea that diversity is a positive value, even if their actions do not always seem to bear this out. However, it is noteworthy that the community's African-American population remains very low (2.1 percent in 1990, probably somewhat higher today)-a remarkable fact given that Jackson Heights borders on two smaller neighborhoods (Corona and East Elmhurst) with longstanding African-American populations. To a considerable degree, the commonly accepted eastern border of Jackson Heights has been defined by the traditional boundary of Black settlement.' From Development to Community: The Creation of Although first developed as a planned community, Jackson Heights is an example of unplanned, unlikely, and unintended diversity. Indeed, the early vision of the community's developers could hardly have been further from the multiethnic urban neighborhood that it has become. Like much of Queens County, Jackson Heights remained rural until the late 19th century. Despite its proximity to the city of New York (into which it was incorporated in the 1890s), Queens continued to develop as a network of autonomous townships and hamlets that were surrounded by open land and industrial areas long after Manhattan and Brooklyn were largely urbanized. Queens became a viable bedroom community only after expansion of transportation infrastructure made commuting to Manhattan practical in the early 20th century. Present day Jackson Heights was created by a group of real estate speculators who, in 1908, started to buy open land in the western part of the former township of Elmhurst to |