ancient cities

other cities. Adjacent neighborhoods were merged
into significant zones of Latina/o cultural dominance.
The reach of the barrio surged throughout
regions of the Southwest, creating a new period of
barrio urbanism.
By the late 1970s, three types of patterns
emerged: (1) traditional barrios surging into adjacent
neighborhoods; (2) cities and regions that
evolved into a system of intermittent Latina/o
dominated zones, working-class suburbs, and inner
city; and (3) the duality of a traditional barrio disjointed
from middle-class Latinas/os migrating
suburbia, older or new locations. This often
resulted in the acceleration of economic decline in
traditional barrios. Whereas the Los Angeles basin
exhibits all three typologies, other cities formed
dissimilar spatial relationships. El Paso is an example
of the first scenario: El Segundo Barrio continued
to expand into adjacent zones, creating a
totally controlled Chicana/o urban zone. Phoenix,
Denver, and Sacramento have evolved into the
second topology in which selected suburban communities
have experienced significant multiethnic
integration, while other adjacent zones have
remained predominately European American.
Tucson, San Jose, and San Diego exhibit the third
type of relationship in which suburban migration
has created a spatial and social distance from the
traditional barrio. Logan Heights in San Diego is
isolated from suburban patterns north of the central
city, and Tucson, mainly because Viejo Barrio
was destroyed, led to a pattern of distinct barrio
zones.
The Twenty-First-Century Barrio
Barrios remain in crisis. Affordable housing is
a Latina/o urban crisis in the Southwest. Environmental
pollution and land use conflicts increasingly
place barrios at risk in relation to public health.
Economic revitalization, job generation, and small
business stability are problematic in urban barrios.
This is a legacy in which barrios were systemically
denied capital reinvestment. Uneven development
has left barrios in a permanent status of deterioration,
social dysfunction, limited economic opportunity,
and political marginalization. Planning is
now confronted with an era of bilingualism and
bicultural practices to ensure active minority participation
in land use policy. In particular, demands
Bazaar
61
for bilingualism and inclusion have forced urban
elites to increase public information in relation to
urban policy. Exclusionary practices such as censorship
of information, sequestering Housing and
Urban Development regulations, ignoring environmental
issues, and blatant racism are gradually
subsiding. Barrio residents have begun to demand
a quality of life for lower-income residents.
Simultaneously, barrio urbanism has expanded
into virtually all major urban centers in the
United States.
See also Favela; Ghetto; Los Angeles, California
Further Readings
David Diaz
Davis, Mike. 2000. Magical Urbanism. London: Verso.
Diaz, David. 2005. Barrio Urbanism. New York:
Routledge.
Rodriguez, Nestor. 1993. “Economic Restructuring and
Latino Growth in Houston.” In In the Barrios, edited
by J. Moore and R. Pinderhughes. New York:
Russell Sage.
Valle, Victor M. and Rodolfo D. Torres. 2000. Latino
Metropolis. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Ba z a a r
Originally referring to a vaguely defined “oriental”
market, the bazaar, as an institution and a
space, has for many centuries exercised its attraction
upon observers from all over the world. A
sensorially and semiotically overloaded space and
a point of encounter of various influences, actors,
artefacts, and symbols, the bazaar is commonly
presented in most travel guides, novels, and
reportages (and often in scholarly work too) as
the epitome of Middle Eastern (and Asian) societies;
as the arena where visitors can capture the
most picturesque and “authentic” impressions of
the “culture” of such areas. An originally localized
space and notion, the bazaar has therefore
become a constitutive part of translocal fantasies
as well as an example of Western exoticizing and
orientalistic representations of the world.