Lateral Exchanges: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Practices. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2024. US$40.00, paper. ISBN 9781477329719.
Despite extensive scholarship on cities, few studies have comprehensively examined the role of migrants in transforming the built environment and influencing planning policies. Erica Allen-Kim’s trailblazing book, Building Little Saigon, highlights the power of Cold War refugees to make and remake American cities through buildings, a process she fittingly describes as “refugee urbanism.” Vietnamese refugee experiences stand apart from other migrant-driven forms of urbanization: their architectural interventions and placemaking efforts emerged not only from the universal desire of migrants to create a sense of home and belonging in unfamiliar spaces, but also from the distinct impacts of trauma and exile following the 1975 fall of Saigon. Vietnamese diasporic landscapes, as Allen-Kim convincingly shows, arose from shared experiences of estrangement and marginalization within racist planning cultures, rendering their architectural assertions of visibility and cultural identity especially resonant in spaces where fraught homeland politics found a place in material expression.
The scope of Allen-Kim’s multi-sited research is vast: in settlements across the United States, she uncovered how Vietnamese refugees have repurposed vacant properties to create ethnically coded built environments. These communities resist—to varying degrees of success—design assimilation and generic multiculturalism, generating value and growth while challenging mainstream narratives of the war. The stakes are high, as buildings born of memories of past violence and displacement speak to the future flourishing of the diaspora.
The book’s central argument—that Little Saigons represent contested (sub)urban projects reflecting the unique adaptability of Vietnamese urbanisms—develops over five chapters, moving geographically across the country through symbolic architectural forms within historically specific building contexts. Chapter 1 on the cultural dynamics of refugee resettlement in Chicago’s historic Chinatown sets the tone for the book by highlighting Vietnamese early ventures into real estate and commercial development that reshaped existing urban landscapes. Newcomers adapted marginal city spaces, while navigating tensions with established migrant communities, which resulted in interethnic conflicts over branding, themed design, and resource allocation. This palimpsest of ethnic enclaving encompassed not only Asian Americans but also American veterans, whose presence through storefront war museums added another layer to the complex narrative of memory and placemaking at the heart of efforts to secure “mainstream visibility” (40)—a struggle meticulously documented in each chapter.
Chapter 2 examines how Vietnamese refugees transformed suburban shopping centers into mixed-use mini malls, adapting marketplace practices from Vietnam. By subdividing retail spaces into smaller shops and allowing informal vending to develop organically outside, these developments became cultural and economic hubs of diasporic life, embodying migrant entrepreneurial ambitions and Vietnamese spatial traditions. This pattern is especially pronounced in Southern California, where mini mall growth has been shaped by evolving property relations and transnational economic connections following U.S.-Vietnamese normalization. Through architectural design that blended modern elements with colonial or orientalist motifs as “referents of place memory” (59), developers created distinctive retail spaces as signifiers of refugee urbanism.
Chapter 3 shifts to the politicization of Little Saigons, exploring how Vietnamese refugees engaged in place-based memory politics through monument construction in civic and private spaces. These memorials countered U.S. monuments that either omitted or minimized the contributions of South Vietnamese soldiers. Through conventional figurative designs, Vietnamese-designed monuments asserted a distinct “Saigon nationalism” rooted in anticommunist ideology, challenging the invisibility of Vietnamese veterans in U.S. commemorations while inscribing these values onto diasporic landscapes. Despite facing opposition, these contested projects represent important expressions of refugee spatial agency and attempts to control diasporic narratives through shared experiences of loss and displacement.
Both mini malls and monuments have been integral to revitalizing suburban districts, driven by architectural and social infrastructural expansion intrinsic to “refugee urbanization” (5). Perhaps no other Little Saigon is as iconic as Westminster, California, the quintessential example of refugee urbanism and the focus of chapter 4. In Westminster, urban design serves as a “living memorial to prewar Vietnam” (136). Residential and commercial developments capture the area’s economic and cultural vitality, blending Vietnamese heritage with mainstream design practices. Planning interventions promote a curated fusion of Asian and French colonial styles through architectural choices that evoke Saigon landmarks like Bến Thành Market, creating a distinctive refugee aesthetic that revitalizes but also sanitizes the historical character of “Old Saigon.” This approach serves dual purposes: marketing ethnic heritage for tourism while sustaining cultural resilience among to co-ethnics, transforming Westminster into a space of intergenerational belonging where evolving diasporic identities remain deeply bound to homeland politics and memory.
Contrary to Westminster’s unprecedented scale, longevity, and achieved urban autonomy, the Vietnamese community in inner city Houston—the subject of chapter 5—has struggled to establish a lasting Little Saigon. Allen-Kim attributes this difference to a critical lack of institutional support and white-dominated planning that promotes a generic “marketplace multiculturalism” (18). In Houston, rising property values and racial hostility toward efforts to create a Vietnamese enclave have made its Little Saigon ephemeral—decentralized, architecturally indistinct, and caught between pan-Asian branding and Saigon nationalism.
An epilogue reinforces one of the book’s most important takeaways from its richly detailed urban case studies: there is no singular “Building Little Saigon,” as the title might imply, but rather multiple Little Saigons, each shaped by local contingencies and histories of migrant-led urbanization. These enclaves exist not simply—and not always—as materialized places but also as ideas and aspirations—shaped by the past and yet oriented toward the future. While there may be debate about what a Little Saigon should be, whose interests it serves, and the identities it represents, what connects these evolving spaces across the cities discussed in the book are their shared nature as “defiant built landscape(s)” (169) that demand inclusion and visibility.
Building Little Saigon masterfully chronicles how Vietnamese Americans—as developers, planners, artists, and entrepreneurs—have repurposed and built anew urban spaces not as passive inheritors but as active creators of more inclusive cities. With keen attention to building politics unfolding on the ground,the book reveals the ways these dynamic landscapes—subject to constant negotiation—have evolved in response to wider social, economic, and geopolitical forces. Its compelling analysis of refugee urbanism offers a powerful testament to the agency and innovation of Vietnamese migrants as they continuously redefine their presence and significance within the ever-changing urban fabric of American cities.
Christina Schwenkel
University of California, Riverside