This book focuses on three ethnic neighborhoods in San Francisco--commoditized Chinatown, gentrified Japantown, and defunct Manilatown--and argues that the city is global because it comprises a multiplicity of global niches in its midst that interface with and sustain each other at the local level. According to Michel Laguerre, these enclaves are not simply transnational communities, but global ethnopoles. They must be seen within the logic of globalization and not simply that of transnationality.