Little Saigon, San Jose, CA

Little Saigon is the beating heart of a Vietnamese community that arrived after the Fall of Saigon in 1975 and grew into what is now the largest Vietnamese population of any single city outside Vietnam. Story Road is its main stage, lined with Vietnamese restaurants, groceries and the big business centers, Grand Century Mall, which opened in 2000, and the newer Vietnam Town beside it, with a seasonal night market that turns the area into a regional destination. The neighborhood is defined as much by politics as by pho. In 2007 and 2008, a bitter fight over what to officially call the district, capped by an activist's hunger strike at City Hall and a recall election against the councilmember who backed a compromise name, made national news; the city ultimately never formally adopted 'Little Saigon,' and the name won out through privately funded signage. That episode showed how mobilized and how deeply anti-communist this electorate is, and Tet remains the marquee celebration. Behind the retail runs flat, older residential fabric. The honest tradeoffs are the density and traffic that come with a busy retail arterial, and a lower-priced, urban feel rather than a quiet suburban one. For buyers who want to live inside a vibrant, authentic commercial district with some of the region's best Vietnamese food at the doorstep, Little Saigon offers an experience no leafy tract can match.