Responses to Spatial Rigidity in Urban Transformation: Korean Business Experience in Los Angeles.

The article examines the experience of Korean business in Los Angeles within the of urban transformation. The principal argument advanced in this article is that responses to urban transformation diverge between industrial sectors, the ethnic migrant communities and regions. The past two decades of industrial change in Los Angeles illustrate a typology of selective and systematic disinvestment in the city's basic productive capacity, including the closures of manufacturing plants in the inner city. It is important that corresponding transformations in the spatial division of labour did not replace the old divisions. Instead there was an evolving sequence of partial and selective transformations in the structure of the city's labour markets. In the case of Korean small businesses in Los Angeles, the sectoral shift revealed a clear pattern in their specific responses to this urban industrial change. While Korean migrants were self-employed increasingly in the small-firms sector, their shares in both manufacturing and construction sectors experienced accentuated growth between 1975 and 1986.