"No Arena in Chinatown": Learning from a Lost Community

Philadelphia city officials are currently considering a proposal for a $1.3 billion basketball arena for the Philadelphia 76ers to be built on the edge of the Chinatown neighborhood. While the developers and city officials promise economic growth for the area, Chinatown residents and many others in Philadelphia believe that the arena will only serve the billionare investors and developers while destroying the vibrant Chinatown community. Activists have successfully fended off large corporate development projects around Chinatown in the past, including a baseball stadium, and are once again working to stop the construction of the 76ers arena. They assert that there is little evidence to support positive growth for the Chinatown community or Philadelphia as a whole (the arena owners will not be paying any property taxes).

Activists point to Washington DC's Chinatown, a once vibrant neighborhood full of small businesses and Asian immigrants that saw a rapid downturn following similar development projects. After the construction of a convention center in the 1980s and Capital One Arena in the Chinatown area in 1997, residents were rapidly displaced, priced out of their homes or evicted, and the proportion of Asian people able to live in the area dwindled. Small local businesses could not longer operate and were replaced by large national corporations.

Use the slider to see changes in the demographics of Washington DC's and Philadelphia's Chinatowns since 1980.

Select a variable: AAPI Population Proportion White Population Proportion Median Household Income College Degree Proportion