May 2017
Laureen Hom, a PhD student of planning, policy and design, has been awarded the Graduate Dean's Dissertation Fellowship for the summer and fall.
The fellowship is intended to help students in their final year complete their dissertations by allowing them to devote more time and energy to their research, rather than outside employment.
For her dissertation, Hom is using a case study of Los Angeles' Chinatown to examine how urban revitalization efforts have unfolded in historical urban ethnic enclaves since the 1965 Immigration Act. She's relying on archival research, in-depth interviews and participant observations.
She argues that the identity of the urban Chinatown has not disappeared, even as the Chinese American community has dispersed geographically across various Southern California "ethnoburbs." Instead, the identity of urban Chinatown is being reconstructed, highlighting its changing value for the community and the city.