An Empirical Exploration of Southeast Asian American Residential Patterns in the San Francisco Bay Area (2000–2019)

This paper explores three methods of reporting residential patterns: (1) concentration profiles, (2) density maps, and (3) proximity profiles. I analyze U.S. Census data to map and evaluate the residential patterns for Southeast Asian Americans in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. Drawing from the field of urban planning, I report two measures of segregation and concentration: (a) dissimilarity indices and (b) spatial proximity indices, and I discuss their limitations. Since mapping and spatial statistics are essential to understanding the histories, development, and advancement of Southeast Asian American communities, it is important to promote their broad usage. The paper's findings lend evidence to three arguments: (1) pioneering moments (the establishment of new immigrant communities) can in fact start path-dependent community growth, (2) clustering and dispersion to some extent can be predicted by classic theories of spatial assimilation, but new dynamics are playing out in today’s communities from Asian and Latino origins, including Southeast Asian American communities, and (3) residential clustering cases are circumstantial, dependent on unique local circumstances.