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What's narrow-minded here is the fact that you're throwing out an insult at someone who in subsequent posts showed that they are able to think outside of their own box. He respects a differing point of view, but when you see that he's not agreeing with you, you show that you are unable to do the same. "Narrow-minded" was the perfect term to use here, now all you need to do is redirect it to yourself.
It's narrow-minded to insist that a suburban area which includes strip mall cannot be vibrant. That is what was posted, and that is what I deemed narrow-minded. Read his response to my post. I would bet he has never even been to Houston's Chinatown.
Manhattan's K-Town is NOT the main Koreatown for NYC. It's just the Manhattan business area for Koreans. There are no Koreans living there or anything.
The main Koreatowns in NYC are on Northern Boulevard in Queens (just east of downtown Flushing) and on Broad Ave, in Palisades Park, NJ (just across the river from Manhattan).
The NY area is the second largest concentrations of Koreans outside of Korea (LA is largest).
I see, good to know. And thank you.
It was actually talked up a bit to me before I got to see it and I was very disappointed, so its good to see that there is much more than that over there. This was the only real life example I've experienced where a suburban Asian business district was more interesting than one of its urban counterparts. I wish I had visited the Queens one when I was in Flushing during that same trip.
My city Los Angeles has a good Chinatown, but everyone seems to not know what excellent things LA has to offer. It's a good sized Chinatown. It's asethetically pleasing and has plenty of authentic chinese shops and plenty of events. It also has a decent chinese population and everything yet people seem to not give it much thought, why?
Here's a video showing how nice of a Chinatown LA has and how easily it could be a contender with the top Chinatowns in North America.
My city Los Angeles has a good Chinatown, but everyone seems to not know what excellent things LA has to offer. It's a good sized Chinatown. It's asethetically pleasing and has plenty of authentic chinese shops and plenty of events. It also has a decent chinese population and everything yet people seem to not give it much thought, why?
Here's a video showing how nice of a Chinatown LA has and how easily it could be a contender with the top Chinatowns in North America.
I'm glad you brought up LA Chinatown. I visited in Summer of 2007 and was pleasantly surprised by what it had to offer. It has a few open air markets and retains some characteristic qualities of SF Chinatown. However, growth there has been limited-- many Asian immigrants are now moving out to places like Alhambra, SGV and such. I still enjoyed visiting though, but it cannot compare with SF.
I'm also surprised Toronto hasn't been mentioned more, I've heard good things about its Chinatown.
The food is no different, neither are traditions, etc. Point taken. You feel I'm placing too much emphasis on aesthetics, and I don't think you're placing enough emphasis on them.
I suppose what I'm thinking is that while even the most urban Chinatowns in the US aren't as dense as most Asian cities (Boston's density is over 28,000 people per square mile in Chinatown), it is an emulation of what a traditional Asian city is like. Tiny, super-dense neighborhoods throughout the streets. Tacky neon signs, dead rabbits, ducks, etc hanging upside down in the window of a fast-food resaurant. Dirty streets, dirty people, and if you're not Asian (like me), a general feeling of "am I still in Boston? (or NY, or SF, etc depending on where you're living)
I don't see how you'd get that sort of atmosphere and feeling in a strip-mall.
Your comments seem very self-indulgent to me. They are all about what you want, and not what the people who live and work in a community want. Seems to me that what you really want is a zoo or a theme park. Houston's Chinatown, though strip mall based, is at least as vibrant as Chinatown's I've been to on both coasts. It is vibrant not because of the ARCHITECTURE, but because of the PEOPLE. They are friendly, hard-working and building a life as immigrants in a freewheeling, boomtown city, which is what Houston is. You may wish to consider EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World. I suspect that they can provide the Chinatown experience you're after. If I am wrong and what you're really interested in is interacting with Chinese immigrants who are friendly and hard at work making a go of it in a new country with a new way of life, Houston is hard to top.
Your comments seem very self-indulgent to me. They are all about what you want, and not what the people who live and work in a community want.
I wasn't describing what I want, I was describing what I have seen as the traditional Chinatowns.
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Seems to me that what you really want is a zoo or a theme park.
Orrrrrrr maybe I'm just thinking about the style of neighborhood which I've observed in cities like Boston and New York.
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Houston's Chinatown, though strip mall based, is at least as vibrant as Chinatown's I've been to on both coasts. It is vibrant not because of the ARCHITECTURE, but because of the PEOPLE. They are friendly, hard-working and building a life as immigrants in a freewheeling, boomtown city, which is what Houston is.
I agree people are what make a neighborhood, not the architecture. I guess I was just talking about Chinatowns in an aesthetic sense.
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You may wish to consider EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World. I suspect that they can provide the Chinatown experience you're after. If I am wrong and what you're really interested in is interacting with Chinese immigrants who are friendly and hard at work making a go of it in a new country with a new way of life, Houston is hard to top.
Again, I'm not sure why you're so convinced I'm looking for a Disney World-esque community. This is the type of community I was describing
That's in NYC, and in my opinion is a picture-perfect Chinatown. It's dense, gritty, etc. Why does me preferring a traditional Chinatown over a strip-mall Chinatown mean I'm self-indulgent and I'm expecting a Disney World neighborhood?
Neighborhoods in older cities where people live, work and play are more vibrant than cities based around strip-mall development. I don't see why its a problem that I would believe the same to be true regarding Chinatowns.
Call me crazy, but I'd say that pic of NY's Chinatown looks slightly more vibrant than this pic of Houston's Chinatown:
The authentic Chinese food are all in the suburban new Chinatowns. Old urban Chinatowns are usually highly Americanized, except for flusing in New York. If you want authentic Chinese food, no place is better than Vancouver in North America. Vancouver doesn't really need a Chinatown because Chinese food is so ubiquitous. But if you want to experience vibrancy and crowdedness, it is a complete different story.
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Originally Posted by Backstrom
When referring to Chinatowns, I am referring to the historical inner-city urban districts which were settled in by immigrants, not suburban "new" Chinatowns, i.e., Richmond BC, SGV in California...
Make your case and post pictures if desired. Don't come up with some BS list saying that 'X' chinatown is the best because it has so many more square blocks than 'Y' chinatown.
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The irony of this post. 
