7.4% Increase Falls Short of Expectations

Swelling numbers of Latinos and Asians reshaped Los Angeles County during the past decade into an increasingly diverse place overall but one separated into ethnic and racial enclaves.

Despite those growing ethnic communities, the county’s overall population did not hit 10 million, as some demographers had expected. In a slight slowing from the previous decade, the number of people living in Los Angeles County edged up 7.4%, bringing the total number of people to about 9.5 million.

Suburban areas in the northern part of the county continued to experience the largest jumps, although the number of people in the south county cities of Hawthorne and Downey also had significant increases.

The fastest overall growth occurred in the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys in the cities of Palmdale, where the population jumped 69.5%; Santa Clarita, where the number of residents climbed 36.6%; and Lancaster, where the increase was 22%.

Meanwhile, some wealthy and established neighborhoods lost residents, such as Santa Monica, whose population dropped 3.2%, and Rolling Hills Estates, which lost 1.5% of its residents. The number of people in La Habra Heights, a small town on the Los Angeles-Orange County border, fell 8.3%.

The San Gabriel Valley, which absorbed a large bump in Asian residents, also lost some whites and blacks, resulting in a modest overall population increase. Montebello grew 4.3%, Whittier grew 7.7% and El Monte’s population rose 9.2%. Despite racially segregated patterns, the movement of nonwhites into such places as the Westside, the South Bay and the San Fernando Valley also has created communities where various races and ethnicities rub shoulders.

“As we work and travel through the county, we’re more likely to encounter diversity,” said Philip Ethington, associate professor of history at USC. “But these figures show that in our residential communities, most often isolation continues to describe our situation.”

This isolation is most pronounced in areas where whites have traditionally dominated the numbers. Beverly Hills, for example, remains a strikingly white city. But Latinos have developed large communities of their own in places such as South Gate and Huntington Park, in the process sometimes dramatically supplanting other groups.

Solidifying a trend that started almost two decades ago, Latinos continued to spill across the county, increasingly moving into the formerly white communities southeast of downtown Los Angeles and some historic black neighborhoods of South-Central. The number of Latinos in the county increased about 20%, bringing their representation to between 41% and 44.6% of the total county population.

Racial and Ethnic Percentages Change

Only 600 census tracts in the county were more than 50% Latino in 1990. Today, that number has soared to 757. The cities with the greatest increase of Latinos were Los Angeles, Long Beach, Downey, Palmdale and Pomona.

Meanwhile, the county representation of African Americans dwindled to about 10%, worsening the fears of many black leaders who worry that the trend could translate into diminished political power.

Once sprinkled in small pockets throughout the county, notably in Chinatown and Monterey Park, a more robust Asian population has created strongholds in the San Gabriel Valley, north Long Beach and along the border with Orange County. Asians experienced the largest growth of any group in Los Angeles County, a rise of about 26%, even though they remain less than 14% of the population.

The white population dropped dramatically in the last decade--a decrease of about 18%--as whites continued their outward migration, leaving behind a county where fewer than a third of the residents are white.

The effects of growth and living patterns are starkly visible. A map of the county’s census figures shows the city of Los Angeles presents a kaleidoscope of color surrounded by a ring of white. Latinos now dominate the city’s eastern reaches and increasingly live south and west of downtown Los Angeles. But the hills to the north and the well-to-do neighborhoods of the Westside remain predominantly the domain of whites.

As African Americans have left, the core black community remains in an urban area centered around the Crenshaw district, west of downtown and south of the Santa Monica Freeway.

“Diversity has in some ways helped increase residential interaction between racial groups . . . but we still are a ways from being a fully integrated society,” said Paul Ong, director of UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.

Latinos, for instance, increasingly live in homogeneous communities, making them less likely to be exposed to people of different backgrounds, Ethington said.

Diversity Spreads to Suburban Areas

Still, Los Angeles is one of the most diverse counties in the state, Ong noted.

Although whites continue to retreat to the suburbs and some areas are strongly segregated, the spread of Latinos and Asians has also touched those suburbs. So whites today are more likely to live near someone of a different race than in 1990, Ethington said, a sign of the reaches of Los Angeles’ diversity.

“The fact is that there are large stretches of L.A. where there are quite diverse populations,” said Joe Hicks, executive director of the city’s Human Relations Commission. “The question for those of us working on ethnic relations is, ‘How do we get people to see their community beyond their skin color and work together to understand they have common interests?’ It’s got to be an ethic of sharing resources.”

Some community leaders worry that the county has not yet come to terms with the new ethnic complexity that has replaced the old black-white pattern.

What Los Angeles needs now is “culturally fluent leaders,” said Bonghwan Kim, executive director of the nonprofit Multicultural Collaborative.

“The challenge is to find leadership that goes beyond your own ethnic group in community-based organizations and institutions and schools, folks that really understand the dynamics of different communities.”

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Los Angeles County Growth

Fastest growing:

Palmdale -- 69.5%

Irwindale -- 37.7%

Santa Clarita -- 36.6%

City of Industry -- 23.1%

Lancaster -- 22.0%

Slowest growing:

Vernon -- -40.1%

La Habra Heights -- -8.3%

Cerritos -- -3.3%

Santa Monica -- -3.2%

Sierra Madres -- -1.7%

City by city

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2000 % Change City pop. from 1990 Agoura Hills 20,537 0.7 Alhambra 85,804 4.5 Arcadia 53,054 9.9 Artesia 16,380 5.9 Avalon 3,127 7.2 Azusa 44,712 8.2 Baldwin Park 75,837 9.4 Bell 36,664 6.7 Bell Gardens 72,878 17.9 Bellflower 44,054 4.0 Beverly Hills 33,784 5.7 Bradbury 855 3.1 Burbank 100,316 7.1 Calabasas 20,033 n.a. Carson 89,730 6.8 Cerritos 51,488 -3.3 Claremont 33,998 4.6 Commerce 12,568 3.6 Compton 93,493 3.4 Covina 46,837 8.4 Cudahy 24,208 6.1 Culver City 38,816 0.1 Diamond Bar 56,287 4.9 Downey 107,323 17.4 Duarte 21,486 3.9 El Monte 115,965 9.2 ElSegundo 16,033 5.3 Gardena 57,746 15.8 Glendale 194,973 8.3 Glendora 49,415 3.3 Hawaiian Gardens 14,779 8.4 Hawthorne 84,112 17.9 Hermosa Beach 18,566 1.9 Hidden Hills 1,875 8.4 Huntington Park 61,348 9.4 Industry 777 23.1 Inglewood 112,580 2.7 Irwindale 1,446 37.7 La Canada-Flint. 20,318 4.9 La Habra Heights 5,712 -8.3 La Mirada 46,783 15.7 La Puente 41,063 11.1 La Verne 31,638 2.4 Lakewood 79,345 7.9 Lancaster 118,718 22.0 Lawndale 31,711 16.0 Lomita 20,046 3.4 Long Beach 461,522 7.5 Los Angeles 3,694,820 6.0 Lynwood 69,845 12.8 Malibu 12,575 n.a. Manhattan Beach 33,852 5.6 Maywood 28,083 0.8 Monrovia 36,929 3.3 Montebello 62,150 4.3 Monterey Park 60,051 -1.1 Norwalk 103,298 9.6 Palmdale 116,670 69.5 Palos Verdes Ests. 13,340 -1.3 Paramount 55,266 15.9 Pasadena 133,936 1.8 Pico Rivera 63,428 7.2 Pomona 149,473 13.5 Rancho Palos Ver. 41,145 -1.2 Redondo Beach 63,261 5.1 Rolling Hills 1,871 0 Rolling Hills Ests. 7,676 -1.5 Rosemead 53,505 3.6 San Dimas 34,980 8.0 San Fernando 23,564 4.4 San Gabriel 39,804 7.2 San Marino 12,945 -0.1 Santa Clarita 151,088 36.6 Santa Fe Springs 17,438 12.4 Santa Monica 84,084 -3.2 Sierra Madre 10,578 -1.7 Signal Hill 9,333 11.5 South El Monte 21,144 1.4 South Gate 96,375 11.7 South Pasadena 24,292 1.5 Temple City 33,377 7.3 Torrance 137,946 3.6 Vernon 91 -40.1 Walnut 30,004 3.1 West Covina 105,080 9.4 West Hollywood 35,716 1.1 Westlake Village 8,368 12.2 Whittier 83,680 7.7

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