What is the largest U.S. city without a Chinatown?
I’m sure we’re not the largest without one, but we can work by elimination: Charlotte, NC does not have one (the last time I looked Charlotte was around 20th in size.)
According to Wiki, the U.S. Chinatowns are in:
San Francisco
New York City
Manhattan
Flushing
Brooklyn
Boston
Philadelphia
Washington, D.C.
Los Angeles
Edmonton
Chicago
Detroit
Houston
Seattle
The largest US Cities are:
New York
Los Angeles
Chicago
Houston
Phoenix
Philadelphia
San Antonio
San Diego
Dallas
San Jose
So, if Wiki is to be believed, the largest US city without a Chinatown is Phoenix.
Largest cities in size or population?
St. Louis had a small Chinatown (probably more like a Chinablock) but it was knocked out as part of urban renewal in the 1950s-60s. I’d imagine there were a lot of cities with a lot of ethnic neighborhoods with similar fates.
My list was largest city by population. If we do largest city by size (area) it would be Yakutat, Alaska. In fact, the largest city (by area) to have a Chinatown (according to Wiki) would be Houston, which is the 10th largest city by area.
Count DC in that category. Our Chinablock is becoming less Chinese (and less Asian overall) every year - it’s just about as common to refer to it as Gallery Place as Chinatown.
Why would you ever go by land area when asking a question like this? A city, in a social sense, is its people, not its artificially drawn municipal boundaries.
Singapore has a Chinatown. I love that.
Cleveland (the 43rd-largest U.S. city) has a small Chinatown, too: http://www.cleveland.com/heritage/index.ssf?/heritage/more/chinese/chinese1.html
Population. As usual, size doesn’t matter.
I remember going to a Cleveland Chinatown when I was a kid, back in the 50s. This was the first Chinese food I ever ate, since there were no other Chinese restaurants in the area. I was hooked.
(And back then, Cleveland was the 6th largest U.S. city!)
Phoenix at least has a China-block/mini-mall: http://www.phxchinatown.com/
It doesn’t look like there’s one in San Antonio, though, so if we’re counting China-blocks that’s probably the answer.
Also, Edmonton is going to be alarmed to learn it has one of the US’s Chinatowns!
But DC’s Chinatown has never been razed, right? The Chinese have never been pushed out en masse by sudden radical changes?
I took that to be kunilou’s meaning.
You’re not going to get a definitive answer, as you won’t get agreement as to what constitutes a “Chinatown”, but I’d go with this. If you are going to argue that cultural centers and areas predominantly occupied by businesses catering to Chinese people constitute a “Chinatown”, maybe places like Phoenix, San Antonio and San Jose have them. But they are NOT classic “Chinatown” enclaves ala New York, SF or Oakland.
Most of DC was razed in the 1968 riots. Chinatown itself never resembled downtown Beirut so much as, say Columbia Heights did, but it was never the same. The sizable Chinese community living there before then fled to the 'burbs en masse. The Metro station there didn’t even mention Chinatown in its name until 1986.
The first sentence of this posting has to be one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever seen on a SDMB. If I had to estimate how much of Washington was damaged in the 1968 riots (and I was there), I would say less than 1%. The damage was pretty much confined to the 14th Street, NW corridor and the H Street, NE corridor. Chinatown was almost totally unaffected.
As a gay man you know that ain’t so
[But you do get points for the best response so far]
Detroit has a Chinatown?? Mexicantown, check. Greektown, check. but Chinatown?
mmm
ETA: Wiki says Detroit’s Chinatown is ‘historic’, so I nominate Detroit as the largest city without a Chinatown.
Except that Detroit is smaller than Phoenix.