Is Bellevue a New Brooklyn?

Bellevue, Seattle's largest neighboring city, grapples with Robert Lang's categorization of it as a "boomburb" -- having nearly as many foreign born citizens (32%) as New York's Brooklyn neighborhood (38%).

1 minute read

December 17, 2006, 5:00 AM PST

By meganrs

"[Robert Lang] says he doesn't mean Bellevue feels urban like Brooklyn. It surely doesn't -- downtown feels more like a giant mall than ever, now that it has four of them. Three are insufferably titled 'The Bellevue Collection.' Only Bellevue would 'collect' malls.

Lang says he means that Bellevue is a 'cosmoburb' -- a place tagged as a white suburb that is no longer either white or suburban. Bellevue now is less white than Seattle and has nearly as high a share of foreign-born residents (32 percent) as Brooklyn (38 percent).

Yet people can't bring themselves to call it a real city."

Thanks to Megan Ritchie Saffitz

FULL STORY: Is Bellevue a New Brooklyn?

Thursday, December 14, 2006 in The Seattle Times

Social / Demographics Washington

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