

This morning the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund released a 50-page report analyzing the changes in New York's, Boston's, and Philly's Chinatowns since 1990, which?to no one's surprise?chronicled the gentrification of those areas, which are no more the sole domain of immigrants. Employing a number of barometers, the report's land use surveys, maps, and statistics show that, in New York, luxury housing is encroaching on the area, rents and property prices have increased (though not as much as in the other cities because of rent regulation laws), the number of Asian restaurants has declined, the number of hotels has climbed, and the number of white residents has increased. Since one characteristic of Chinatowns is multiple generations living together under one roof, that's another metric used to show that families who traditionally called Chinatown home are being priced or pushed out. Meanwhile, owner-occupied residences are on the rise. There's anecdotal evidence, too. The report cites one telling example: just before a large coffee shop opened on Canal Street recently, someone scrawled the Chinese characters for "gentrification" on the plywood. So everyone's taking note.

· Full report: Chinatown Then & Now [AALDEF]

· All Chinatown coverage [Curbed]

· Gentrification Watch archive [Curbed]