Residential Design Guidelines, Aesthetic Governmentality, and Contested Notions of Southern California Suburban Places

Abstract

Since the 1970s, San Gabriel Valley suburban cities have become a desirable destination for thousands of immigrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Southeast Asia, but their remaking of existing residential landscapes has provoked controversy and opposition. At play are two contrasting real estate value regimes: a regional or transnational perspective held by most immigrants and a traditional or preservationist view advocated by long-term, mostly white residents. This study explores the role of urban planners' use of residential design guidelines to limit and shape home construction practices in four cities. The delineation of common components of "aesthetic governmentality," including episteme, identities, visibility, techne, and ethos, framed the examination of the guidelines and design review procedures. Analysis reveals the challenges planners and design review boards face implementing regulations based on expert understandings of visual architectural forms. Although initially resistant to such design requirements, immigrants finally complied by hiring design professionals in the same way long-term residents do.

Design Assimilation in Suburbia

“…to change the way they 'see' space and themselves in that space and to promote a new set of aesthetic preferences." 110 Yet, our evidence suggests a more layered, complex formation of aesthetic sensibilities than this state-imposed dynamic suggests. Ethnic Asian suburbanites melded personal homeland memories, expectations of American comforts and advantages, and an array of aesthetic predilections with hegemonic American suburban tastes, and out of it all, they emerged as full-fledged members of affluent suburbia, as the payoff of design assimilation.…”

Introduction: Betrayal and Urban Development Across the Globe

“…A n interesting strand of studies of urban development concentrates not on the residents or traders who are affected but on the policies and the planners, engineers, architects, municipal officials, and other stakeholders. These studies include the planning of transportation infrastructure, such as new roads, bus lanes, railways, and airports (Boholm 2013;Hilbrandt 2017;De Koning 2015;Lawrence-Zúñiga 2015;Sadana 2018). They show urban development to be a complete industry, with different social, political, and commercial interests on the part of public and private actors, full of messiness and contingency.…”

The Battle for Suburbia: Landscapes of Difference in Silicon Valley

“…But the book obviates discussion of how status modulates experience. The local reactions in Fremont, if anything, seem to resemble those in other ethnoburbs—in Monterey Park and the San Gabriel Valley (e.g., Horton ; Lawrence‐Zúñiga )—even when the immigrants are specified as “different kinds.” On the other hand, the author cites research by Jiménez and Horowitz () conducted in Cupertino, another techno‐ethnoburb close to Fremont, where it has been observed that Asian Americans challenged the norms of whites as the benchmark population to which all must adjust. Lung‐Amam asserts that in Fremont, Asian Americans have neither upset the norms entirely nor reduced the power of dominant educational norms.…”

“…Homes built by Asians were regarded as distasteful and as having failed to fit the “norm.” In fact, Asian Americans built such homes for practical reasons and functionality (e.g., investment, accommodation of multigenerational households) and as an expression of their class identity. Regulatory policy and planning concerning architectural design are not unique to Fremont and have been documented elsewhere (see Lawrence‐Zúñiga for the case of the San Gabriel Valley). The debates were mediated by city planners and policy makers who adopted a new, citywide, design review process, which in effect encouraged traditional landscape aesthetics.…”