Strategies for multicultural cities : overcoming barriers to effective planning and community development in three Vietnamese American communities

Abstract

Today, 34 years after the first large wave of Vietnamese refugees arrived in the United States, the challenges that the Vietnamese American community face cannot be under-stated. However, there have been many strategies deployed by a variety of actors, both community-based and those who are less regularly immersed in the communities, to address the myriad of challenges. The goals of this thesis are to identify the most salient challenges to effective planning and community development in Vietnamese American communities, to describe a variety of strategies that community-based actors and those operating from the "outside" can use to address these challenges, and to make recommendations based on these findings. The Vietnamese American communities in New Orleans, Biloxi, MS and Boston are used as cases to illustrate these challenges and strategies. The challenges identified include: the "Generation Gap," anti-Communism and conflicts over homeland politics, lack of experience and exposure to traditional American non-profit and civic engagement structures, lack of linguistic and cultural competency on the part of planners, and lack of funding and resources. The strategies identified are explicitly linked to the specific challenges, and reflect a wide variety of interventions such as bridging generational divides through story-telling, developing consistent outreach and language access policies, and building multicultural coalitions through joint catalyst projects.

(cont.) The resulting recommendations incorporate lessons learned from the challenges and strategies in order to provide general competencies as well as specific tools for effective community engagement, planning, and community development in Vietnamese American communities.