Becky M. Nicolaides, "The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Summary

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New Books Network: Becky M. Nicolaides on "The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945"

Date: October 22, 2025
Host: Jim Wunsch
Guest: Becky M. Nicolaides
Book Discussed: The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945 (Oxford UP, 2024)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jim Wunsch interviews historian Becky M. Nicolaides about her new book The New Suburbia, which traces the transformation of Los Angeles’ suburbs from the mid-twentieth century to the early 2000s. Far from the monolithic and predominantly white enclaves often associated with suburban America, Nicolaides illustrates the evolution and diversification of LA’s suburbs—economically, racially, and culturally. Through case studies of places like Southgate, Pasadena, San Marino, and Lakewood, the book—and this discussion—explore how changing demographics and shifting social and economic forces have reshaped the suburban landscape.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Challenging Suburban Stereotypes

• Nicolaides’ first book, My Blue Heaven, documented working-class, not middle-class, white suburbia.
• (03:40) Southgate, LA, was a “center of blue collar life”–white factory workers seeking homeownership and stability.
• Becky notes that suburbia was not always privileged: “Even they [white working class] were able to find their way into the suburbs… There were a lot of sort of loose regulations in these particular kinds of suburbs. So it gave them the chance to find that life and be able to become suburban homeowners.” (04:25)

2. Trajectory of Suburban Transformation (1945–2000s)

• The suburbs started as “the image of the white middle-class nuclear family” in the 1950s and 1960s (08:05).
• Massive demographic change set in by the 1970s, with rising racial and ethnic diversity.

Contributing factors:

• Immigration Act of 1965 (opened doors to Asia and Latin America) (09:41)
• Fair Housing Act (1968) and Supreme Court rulings on housing discrimination (10:22)

3. Case Studies of Suburbia’s Evolution

Southgate: From Blue Heaven to Barrio

• Postwar economic boom based on manufacturing; “a good standard of living for white families.”
• Racial politics, especially school desegregation, and deindustrialization in the 1970s–80s led to white flight.
• Latinos moved in, seeing opportunity in economic crisis: “I think Latinos look at this urban crisis as an opportunity and they move into it... and have kind of moved in and on some level, revitalized cities in some of those areas.” (12:45)
• Unique among Rustbelt stories: instead of depopulation, Southgate’s population rose, with families adding units to lots (13:40).

Pasadena: Elite Diversity and Segregation

• Known for its wealth and elite institutions; always had Black, Latino, and Asian minorities—service populations for wealthy whites.
• “I call it the yin and yang of elite suburbia. Where you’ve got the wealthy whites, but you’ve got that domestic service.” (16:00)
• Despite never being a sundown town, Pasadena remained highly segregated. Desegregation in the 1970s led to “white flight within”—whites stayed in Pasadena, but retreated into private schools, clubs, and churches (17:46).
• “Pasadena has one of the highest rates of private school attendance… it resegregated the schools.” (19:18)

San Marino: From WASP Exclusion to Ethnic Integration

• Historically the “creme de la creme” of LA’s white elite, and a sundown town (21:00).
• Adjacent to more diverse Pasadena, San Marino imported domestic workers but remained closed to minorities for decades.
• After 1965, Asian, especially Chinese, immigration rose steeply—with Chinese Americans becoming the majority by 2000.
• “What binds the Chinese with these upper class WASPs? They have much in common… their wealth… conservative values… desire for a certain kind of very American looking suburb.” (23:16)
• Integration was achieved not so much through multiculturalism as through shared elite values and wealth.

Lakewood: Mass-Produced Integration

• Built as an “instant city”—the Levittown of the West. Over 17,000 homes built in three years (25:35).
• Racial exclusion in its founding years; by the 1970s–80s, massive demographic change led to sustained, stable diversity.
• “Lakewood actually turns out to become one of the most racially balanced communities in LA County. It goes from being super white to incredibly diverse and stably diverse…” (27:33)
• Recent example: first Black city council member, Cassandra Chase, elected in 2022 (27:46).
• Nicolaides tells the story of the Williams family, a Black couple who found community and engagement in Lakewood: “They really Left me with the sense that they are really committed to their community and they're there for the long haul.” (29:38)

4. Reassessing Suburban Experience

• Contrary to academic anxieties (Jane Jacobs’ critique of suburban atomization), Nicolaides finds robust civic life and neighborly ties—even in “uniform” environments like Lakewood (31:01).
• “You can find a lot of surprises in these communities.” (31:01)

5. Persistent Issues: Diversity ≠ Equity

• Wunsch points out that diversity does not guarantee justice or equity, as demonstrated by ongoing school and housing segregation (32:55).
• Nicolaides notes intra-ethnic tensions: “When I approached LA ethnic suburbia, I thought every ethnic suburb would look ethnic…That was not what I found. I found some level of resistance to that… They were passing measures to kind of suppress that. That happens in San Marino. It happens in Southgate…” (33:25)
• Trends of “spatial policing” surfaced, even within immigrant and minority groups.

6. The Changing Political Climate

• The 1980s represented a low point for immigrant rights, but today, California is more blue and empathetic. Federal-local shifts in immigration policy enforcement have changed attitudes (35:20).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On working-class suburbia:
  “Even they were able to find their way into the suburbs. There were opportunities for them. Land was cheap. A lot of them built their own homes…”
  —Becky Nicolaides (04:25)

• On Latino revitalization:
  “Latinos look at this urban crisis as an opportunity and they move into it...”
  —Becky Nicolaides (12:45)

• On Pasadena’s paradox:
  “Pasadena has one of the highest rates of private school attendance in the state. It’s way up there…”
  —Becky Nicolaides (19:39)

• On San Marino’s transformation:
  “By 2000, Chinese Americans are the majority in San Marino. So I’d say in one generation there’s a major shift.”
  —Becky Nicolaides (22:46)

• On shared values bridging ethnic divides:
  “They [Chinese and WASPs] also shared certain more conservative values. They believed in pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you work hard, you can make it in this country.”
  —Becky Nicolaides (23:16)

• On the meaning of home:
  “It doesn’t look like a place that would be hospitable to diversity, does it?...And yet there it is…”
  —Jim Wunsch (30:56)

• On intra-ethnic conflict:
  “When I approached LA ethnic suburbia, I thought every ethnic suburb would look ethnic…That was not what I found.”
  —Becky Nicolaides (33:25)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:40 – Southgate as a working-class “blue heaven”
• 08:05 – Suburban whiteness and the beginning of demographic change
• 09:41 – Federal policies enabling racial change
• 12:45 – Latino “revitalization” of Southgate and embracing suburban crisis
• 14:55 – Pasadena: elite suburb, segregation, and service populations
• 16:44 – Desegregation and “white flight within” in Pasadena
• 21:00 – San Marino’s elite seclusion, then Asian integration
• 22:46 – Chinese majority emerges in San Marino
• 25:35 – Lakewood: mass housing and demographic evolution
• 27:46 – First Black city councilmember in Lakewood, Cassandra Chase
• 29:38 – Williams family story: Black homeownership and civic engagement
• 31:01 – Surprising evidence of social connection in uniform suburbs
• 33:25 – Conflicts within new ethnic majorities and the “spatial policing” of diversity
• 35:20 – Shift from local anti-immigrant politics to more empathetic responses

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Conclusion

Becky M. Nicolaides’ The New Suburbia dispels longstanding myths about American suburbia, painting a rich and complex picture of communities transformed by immigration, economic change, and evolving social norms. Rather than uniformity or inevitable decline, she finds stories of resilience, contestation, and surprising forms of integration—in all their messiness and promise. The book and this conversation challenge both popular and academic preconceptions about what suburban life can and does look like, ultimately suggesting that the meaning of home, community, and belonging is constantly negotiated and redefined.

A must-read for urban historians, policymakers, and anyone interested in the future of American cities and suburbs.

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Transcript

[A]

Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast, or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts, and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[B]

Greetings. This is Jim Wunsch, your host in urban studies. I'm talking today with Becky Nicolai D about her new book, the New How Diversity Remade Life in Los Angeles after 1945. Now, I'm aware that suburbia may call to mind a mushy white bread. Well, stay tuned. Dr. Nicolaides, pardon my Greek. Can I call you Becky?

[C]

Yes, of course.

[B]

Will help us understand how that white bread became multigrain rye, pumpernickel, and more. Becky, welcome to the New Books Network.

[C]

Thank you, Jim. I'm glad to be here.

[B]

Now, let's start with Becky. I want to start with the white bread. And your first book, it was a pathbreaking urban history, My Blue Heaven. Okay, now, they don't pay me to sing here, and you're lucky, but the song goes. Molly and me and the baby makes three. Sinatra singing we're happy in my. In my blue heaven. Where is Blue Heaven? And how did you get there, Becky?

[C]

That's a great question. So that book began as my doctoral dissertation. I studied under Ken Jackson at Columbia.

[B]

University, who is the dean of suburban historians now. You're the new dean.

[C]

But this is true? Well, yeah, thank you for not sure about that, but I appreciate that sentiment. So I. I began that study wanting to understand the history of the working class in America in the 20th century. And because I chose Los Angeles to do that, it thrust me into the suburbs. LA was a suburban metropolis and pretty much anywhere you looked in Los angeles in the 20th century, you'd find suburbia. And so when I began poking around in la, as I was starting that work, I honed in on South LA and southeast Los Angeles and particularly the suburb of Southgate, which I came to understand was kind of the center of industrial Los Angeles.

[B]

No, wait, so Southgate is my blue heaven, is that right?

[C]

That is. And it was a center of blue collar life. People, white workers, you know, trying to make a living and find the good life in those pretty humble suburbs in that part of Los Angeles.

[B]

And is this. So this was your first book, really? This is about. But we always thought of suburbia. I always thought about as middle class. This book comes as something of a surprise. These are not middle class people. These are people the way we learned urban history probably be in the city, but they're not in the city. They're pretty far out already, aren't they?

[C]

They are. And they're very, you know, they're wage workers, they're factory workers. They're in, I would say, the working class. So even they were able to find their way into the suburbs. There were opportunities for them. Land was cheap. A lot of them built their own homes because they could do that. There were a lot of sort of loose regulations in these particular kinds of suburbs. So it gave them the chance to find that life and be able to become suburban homeowners.

[B]

And so there. But they're. Or not. But they are white people, are they not? This is a white working class community. There are black suburbs too, but not that many. And we tend, have always tended, I think people who study urban history and just American history think of the suburbs as being first of all, middle class. But Becky here is saying, oh, no, they're working class. But you're confirming that. But we always think of the suburbs as somewhat complacent people. Is this. Are Molly and me. Are we happy there?

[C]

That's a good question. Yeah. You know, I think in some ways, yes, LA was very open shop, so there weren't many. There weren't a lot of strong labor unions yet. In the 20s that would change. But in the 20s in particular, yeah, I mean, these people were able to kind of grasp some semblance of economic security through home ownership, even if that home ownership came out of their own sweat equity as they were building houses themselves. So they were finding their rendition of the good life in these kind of modest suburbs. They weren't really tidy, you know, very high end places. They were kind of rough around the edges. But again, it sort of gave these families that chance for some economic security, especially like when LA was still pretty rabidly open shop early on.

[B]

So then you went back there, didn't you?

[C]

I did.

[B]

Twenty years later after you got your dissertation done?

[C]

More or less, I think a few more years than that, but yes, well, okay, maybe my math is off, but.

[B]

Yeah, first of all, listeners should know that you, you opened people's eyes to the fact that suburbs were not all privileged, that they could be white working class people. And. But then you're on, you take a couple decades and you take another look at, at this suburb and in the book you're going to look at three other suburbs. What happened to this my blue heaven? Is it still heaven? What, what happened?

[C]

Well, maybe heaven might be a little too strong of a, of a kind of description of these places, but it has aspects of that, you know, it's the place, the American dream, right? I mean, the place where people are striving to achieve that. So a lot happens from that earlier story into the period that my latest book gets into, which is the period.

[B]

You'Re looking at now. Pretty much now.

[C]

So the new suburbia takes a story from roughly 1945 up to the early 2000s. And in that sweep of time I look at LA county as a whole. I try to discern the larger patterns of change in the suburbs over that, you know, 60, 70 year period. And a lot changes. I will say that the suburbs start out as being very much that kind of image of the white middle class nuclear family in the, in the 50s and 60s across LA County. I crunched a lot of data for this book, but just to sum that up, in the 50s and 60s, absolutely, that was a reality in almost like every suburban municipality of LA County. That white domination or the sort of the predominance of whites in, in many, many suburban communities of LA, starting in the 70s, things really begin to change and suburbia starts to diversify in multiple ways in pretty kind of astounding degrees.

[B]

Was that because now the feds changed the immigration law in 1965 and it kicked in around 68. Is that critical to your story? It doesn't appear, it's implicit, I think. But is that part of what's happening here?

[C]

I think that is part of it. So the Immigration Part seller Act in 1965 opens up immigration from Asia and Latin America. But there's other things happening too. The Fair housing Act of 1968, other federal measures like the, the supreme court case Shelley versus Kramer, and I believe that was 48, which declared race restrictive covenants unenforceable. So the federal government was absolutely playing an important part in changing the kind of the legalistic landscape of suburbia.

[B]

Very, very helpful. Very. Now let's get back to my blue heaven. It's not white bread anymore. What is it? Look at the data today. It looks very Hispanic. Is that right? What happened and how did that change and why'd the whites move out if they did? I did. I think they did.

[C]

They did. So Southgate becomes a real center of industrial power in la. There was a huge GM plant, a Firestone plant. The unions come in. It's all driving a really strong economy in that area in the 40s and 50s and really became the kind of basis of a good standard of living for white families that stayed there in the 50s and into the 60s. Now what happens? There's some racial politics that started to kick in in the 60s. There was a big school desegregation case that was centered right in that Southgate area, meant to desegregate the schools between Southgate and Watts, which was right next door. They were in the same school district, but were really starkly segregated between white and black. That was a trigger. And there was also what happens a little bit after that in the 70s and by the early 80s, there's de. Industrialization, plant closures. So those plants that had once been the bedrock of like kind of a middle class wage in that community, they close, they leave town and they leave a massive economic void and an economic crisis really in the community.

[B]

And what surprised? What surprised. We've seen this story in Detroit and Cleveland, New York City, all over. And usually what happens. What surprised me a little, Becky, was is that the population did not. You usually expect with the industrialization, people move out and they have abandonment. Not in this case. Population goes up. Hello. Is that right?

[C]

That's exactly. And you see whites leaving and a lot of Latinos coming in. Home prices, they go down, houses become more affordable. I think Latinos look at this urban crisis as an opportunity and they move into it and they kind of, they too are like looking for that better life and they're, they're finding it in communities like this. And I will say that you do see that pattern happening in other metro areas in the US Andrew Sandoval Strauss wrote a great book called Barrio America where he makes a similar argument that Even in the thick of the urban crisis, Latinos move into that and have kind of moved in and on some level, revitalized cities in some of those.

[B]

Areas, we're not seeing abandon. We're actually seeing over the opposite. People putting in houses in their backyard.

[C]

That's right.

[B]

So there's your low cost housing, isn't it? Put a house in the backyard and live in the garage.

[C]

Yes. And that does happen. There's a lot of changes in housing during that Latino influx. It really is a sea change in some ways. But in other ways things stay the same. Or they're trying to make them stay the same too.

[B]

Now I'm going to have to, you know, I'm going to tell you I want to go. You can give us a cook's tour of these wonderful. They were really wonderful places to study. And I thought we'd go upscale for a minute. And a town that you know pretty well, Pasadena, which is a. Not. This is not. This is. This is not blue collar having. This is. This is really wealthy people. Pasadena's famous all around the country. Jet Propulsion Lab and Caltech. Wow. And Cunningham Library. This is the upper crust. What's the story here? You've got white people living here, don't you? But black people too.

[C]

That's right. And that's true from the really early beginnings of Pasadena. It starts out with a lot of Midwesterners coming in. But there's also the discovery of Pasadena by the east coast and Chicago elite, the industrialists. I kind of think of it as the Gilded Age west playing out in Pasadena. These wealthy capitalists and industrialists, they start out by coming out in the winter and then they love what they see. And a lot of them decide to build a second home. Hero huge mansions. We had something called Millionaires Row on Pasadena's orange grove. But who's going to service their homes? From the beginning, there was also African Americans, black Americans who came to Pasadena, and Latinos and Asians, Chinese and Japanese.

[B]

It's no fun to be rich unless you have someone take out the garbage for you.

[C]

That's correct. I call it the yin and yang of elite suburbia. Where you've got the wealthy whites, but you've got that domestic service.

[B]

As I told you, we've seen this before. I think we saw it where I used to live in New Rochelle. It was a black community servicing a very wealthy white suburb and city, certainly. And in Evanston, Illinois, another place. There are more blacks living in Evanston in the 20s than there were in Chicago because you needed the help you wanted to help nearby. But what happens here? What happens to the blacks? What happens to the white? What happens to the rich? Rich don't leave, do they?

[C]

They don't leave. They love it. They stay. But it's not an easy, you know, smooth story. It's history usually is not. So what happens. So Pasadena was never a sundown town. It always had racial diversity from the beginning, but it was highly segregated. So the blacks, Latinos, Asians, they had their sections, the whites had theirs. That all starts to get shaken up. By the 60s especially, there's some pretty intense racial politics that blow up in Pasadena again, around school desegregation. There was a big controversial kind of busing order that came down in 1970. It shakes up the racial status quo. And what I try to. As I was kind of tracing that story, I found that there was some white flight. Absolutely. But a lot of whites stayed. But they were tending to withdraw into their own privatized spaces in the community. I call my chapter White Flight within. Because they stayed. But they sort of separated out into, you know, private schools, private clubs, segregated churches and all of that. It just. It persists.

[B]

Yeah. The amazing thing to me is I was trying to find another site, and I knew Rochelle was famous for that way. It was a wealthy community with a very large black community service community, I think. And they moved under court order to segregate, to desegregate. But the story in your story in Pasadena is quite different because I think instead of moving, they didn't move into Rochelle, they moved to the. But they did have a desegregated high school and then desegregated elementary school. But in your town, Pasadena, the story is quite different, isn't it? They have money, real big money.

[C]

That's right. And that's what maybe sets Pasadena apart a little bit. So, yeah, the school's also desegregated in Pasadena, but the whites left. I mean, they. And that departure resegregates the schools because through private schools.

[B]

So in states of. We saw that somewhat in the south, but then the south actually desegregated more than the North.

[C]

Right.

[B]

So they have. Pasadena's a very interesting community. So if you look at it, it says, oh, this is marvelous. It's diverse, but they have a very segregated school system.

[C]

That's correct. And I think Pasadena has one of the highest rates of private school attendance in of the state. It's way up there and fascinating.

[B]

Fascinating place to study. No two suburbs are alike, but this one really is a standout. Now, I Want to tell we were moving up the economic scale. Let's continue our quick tour. And we're going to go to really ritzy town now, San Marino, is that right?

[C]

That's right.

[B]

Another ex. This is. Now, they don't their black community or their service communities outside San Marino say they're pretty much whiter than white, aren't they?

[C]

They are from very early on, early 20th century. It's where Henry Huntington, real estate and streetcar magnets, builds his palatial mansion, which is now the Huntington Library. It was the creme de la creme of la. A lot they were finding and moving into San Marino. So it was big money there from early on. And very, very segregated. Definitely a sundown town in San Marino.

[B]

But unlike Pasadena, they are in a position actually to import their workers from just outside the town, Right?

[C]

They are, because they're adjacent to. They're right adjacent to Pasadena, where there is a lot more diversity there.

[B]

Now, this seems to have a happy. I'm teasing you a little bit, but this seems to have a happy ending because of all the communities, this is the most integrated after all. It is now, you could say it's an integrated community. Or is it? What happens?

[C]

Yeah, it's one version of integration.

[B]

Tell us. Explain that.

[C]

San Marino stays white and has a really robust social culture. A lot of volunteerism into the 50s and 60s, people are getting involved in their schools. They love their community, parents. They create this tradition of grad night for the high school graduates, which is like a real focal point of energy of parents. And then things start to really change. And this does come after that hard seller act that I mentioned, where we begin to see a lot more Asian immigrants coming into Los Angeles and some of them discover San Marino and they begin moving in. It starts out gradually. By the 80s, it begins to pick up. By 2000, Chinese Americans are the majority in San Marino. So I'd say in one generation there's a major shift.

[B]

Now, if Rip Van Winkle woke up and you told him that the whitest community was now more than half Chinese, the most despised minority in American history, through most of American history, after all, Rip couldn't believe that, could he? But this has become my blue heaven. How do the Chinese. What binds the Chinese with these upper class WASPs? They have much in common, don't they?

[C]

They do. One is their wealth, so they could afford to buy in. And by the time they were trying to do that, those federal laws that I mentioned had kicked in to really kind of make it legally more possible for them. To move in. They also shared certain more conservative values. They believed in pull yourself up by your boots job, you work hard, you can make it in this country. I think they all shared that belief. And they also shared on some level a desire for a certain kind of very American looking suburb. Even though it became an ethnic suburb. They liked the look of Americana in this suburb, which surprised me when I first started looking at this community.

[B]

The moral here is that if you have enough money, you can get to my blue heaven. That is to say, an integrated society, a successfully integrated society in Los Angeles.

[C]

Yes, I think that can happen. So they. It's not. And it didn't happen without a lot of bumps and along the way. But I think that they had ended up in a kind of place of some consensus. But it's come with some cost too, as many things do.

[B]

But of course I'm in a hurry because I've got to complete our tour. And I must say, your book is a wonderful book. Everyone should read it. It's not Happy Valley though, where we are. But then I thought maybe the best story in some ways is Levittown or as you call it, Lakewood, California. And here we're all white and now we're not. We're integrated, aren't we? An integrated society. What happened? Lakewood is Levittown west and man, is it big. It's huge. And successful in some ways I think it is. But what's the story? Not tici Tack. I don't like that word. They're all small development houses, right?

[C]

Yes, absolutely. It is very similar to Luddit town. So Lakewood was built in. In like it was an instant city, they called it. It was built in three years. They built like over 17,000 homes. It mass produced homes. These were the Lakewood, like you said, kind of, you know, 900 to 1100 square feet, modest housing, but housing for the masses. Right. And again, you know, it's that similar trajectory where it was dominated by middle, by, you know, lower, in this case, lower to middle class white families. In the 50s and 60s they were pretty staunchly keeping out people of color early on. The developers were doing that in labor.

[B]

Both blacks and Hispanics are not welcome. Just. And for our listeners, unlike the other communities, this is mass produced.

[C]

It is mass produced.

[B]

Others are not mass producers.

[C]

That's right. And it happens quickly. It happens quickly. It's a kind of quintessential like post war mass produced suburb, much like Levittown. And so, you know, life goes on. People are living the pretty good life There, there's good jobs, as there were in, like, Southgate and some of those other communities in the 50s and 60s again. Now by the 70s, things start to shift, and it's caused by a number of different things. But in the thick of that, there is a major racial, ethnic transition. And Lakewood actually turns out to become one of the most racially balanced communities in LA County. It goes from being super white to incredibly diverse and stably diverse, which, by.

[B]

The way, I think that it's unique in that at least, of the groups that we've been talking about. I'm trying to end this on a positive note, and I think Lakewood in some ways will take us there. Do you think?

[C]

I think yes. Again, it's bumps along the way, but it does end up, I think, in a pretty positive place. They elected their first black city Council Member In 2022, a woman named Cassandra Chase, who I did an extensive interview with for the book and told her family's story in Lakewood. She's serving on the city council there now. And they've, you know, through by hook and by crook, they've tried to figure out how to make things work there.

[B]

And that's. We talked a little bit about this. This book is inviting in part because you're not, you know, I know you and I like data a bit, but we're not afraid of it. But you put some faces on these people and you talked a little bit about the Williams family, Pamela and Derek. In some ways, this is a positive story, isn't it? It's a painful one, but a good one. And this is Lakewood, isn't it, at its best or worst? I don't know. What do you think?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. I interviewed Pamela and Derek. They're married couple. Derek was from Philadelphia. Pamela grew up in the Crenshaw area of LA. They met in LA, got married, moved to Lakewood in 2006, and sort of talked about how all along they loved Lakewood. They were really enamored with the community, and they got really involved. They became neighborhood watch block captives. Derek was, I think, coaching Little League. Pamela was volunteering.

[B]

And this is sort of unpredictable. If we look at what we thought might happen, it didn't happen, did it? It did. Predictable.

[C]

But having said that, you know, in 2020, during the George Floyd BLM summer, there was a lot of explosive racial politics that, that. That did touch Lakewood, and it shook them up to a degree. But they did kind of leave me. I actually gave Derek the last word in my book that they really Left me with the sense that they are really committed to their community and they're there for the long haul. You know, they consider it their own, their hometown, and they're trying to make it a better place by being good neighbors and really being kind of ambassadors of sort of compassion and caring for all of their neighbors there.

[B]

What makes it a little bit confounding to outsiders is when we look at the physical development of Lakewood, we'd say, well, this is not Jane Jacobs territory. There's not mixed uses there. You have to go. I mean. And so it doesn't look like a place that would be hospitable to diversity, does it? You know, I mean, that's right.

[C]

I mean, there's.

[B]

And yet there it is not perfect.

[C]

There's been so much negativity written about the suburbs like this that they, you know, uniform homes spit out uniform people. That's not true. Jane Jacobs did not like places like this. She thought that they were very atomizing. And, you know, you could never have, like, two social interaction. There's no eyes on the street and that kind of thing. That's not true either, because in some of these areas, the neighbors really are connected and they're looking out for each other, and even in a diverse place like that. So you can find a lot of surprises in these communities.

[B]

It almost validates that wonderful book, Holy Land, by.

[C]

By DJ Walde.

[B]

DJ Walde wrote a beautiful book, and he was writing about it and was all white, but he said he validates. I think he validates the concept of owning a home, or at least having a home and a place you care about and not worrying so much about that. It doesn't look right. It is home. It has a meaning to it. And we intellectuals in academia and urban historians can get fooled. And that's why this book really opens things up to us, but in a way that is surprising, and that's what a good book should be, and that's what your book is. But on the whole, these are tough times, aren't they, in LA and around the country. And the book didn't leave me singing about my blue heaven. Exactly. There is the larger question of. And I think about my city, New York, a little. It's the most diverse city and one of the most diverse in the world, and yet we have the most segregated schools and the most segregated housing. Diversity in itself doesn't necessarily bring equity and justice, does it? I mean, you've got a. There is a lot of problems and no suburbs and a good deal of racial and ethnic hostility isn't there?

[C]

There is. And I think the thing that surprised me the most in that regard was finding those conflicts within certain groups. Right. So like when I looked at San Marino and here was a, you know, rising Chinese American population there and they started passing ordinances prohibiting any kind of ethnic traces in the landscape. And there was a lot of Chinese backing of that. So when I, when I approached LA ethnic suburbia, I thought every ethnic suburb would look ethnic, that it would have signs in foreign languages and shops and all of that. That was not what I found. I found some level of resistance to that. Even in these ethnic communities where they didn't want their towns through and through spatial policing is what I call it. They were passing measures to kind of suppress that. That happens in San Marino. It happens in San Southgate where there were real campaigns against undocumented immigrants in that risingly Latino homeowner suburb. So it definitely made me think about our own time. What I found was in the 80s in Southgate, that was a time when authority for immigration enforcement, like law enforcement was thrown to localities. So it was up to local communities to kind of police immigration and the undocumented. And a lot of suburbs jumped into that and were hostile towards undocumented immigrants. Things are different now and I think we're in a really different moment. The 80s was a period of real anti immigrant politics, including in LA. I think we're 40 years out from that and things have changed. All of LA and California, of course, kind of swung heavily blue and there's more empathy, I think, towards the undocumented, towards immigration. And I think given that now that it's the federal government where that immigration authority is swung back to the federal government taking that role on, there's been a different response in these suburbs. More defensive of undocumented immigrants and this kind of thing. There's more sense of nothing like a.

[B]

Threat to make you empathetic. So we're ending on a positive note.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Which is to stick up. And we'll stick up for the neighborhood, even if we don't like the neighbors. It was great to talk to you today. You have written a wonderful book and I hope people read it. And it's certainly an educational book, particularly for academics who may open their eyes and destroy some of the cliches about suburbs. Becky, it was great. Thanks a lot for, for coming.

[C]

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