Introduction: Ethnic Landscapes in an Urban World

Volume eight of Research in Urban Sociology focused on race and ethnicity in New York City. Our original idea when planning that volume was to contrast the ethnic landscape of New York City with that of Los Angeles, and to suggest that while the outpouring of studies from the Los Angeles School proclaims that Los Angeles is different from other cities – and thus is a signifier of the metropolis of the future – the creation of new ethnic landscapes is hardly limited to Los Angeles. Indeed, there is a rich history of both older and newer scholarship concerning ethnic communities in New York City, and we sought to update both the research and to offer a point of comparison between the studies of Los Angeles and other cities.