Changing Faces, Changing Places is a follow-up and in many ways a companion piece to Allen and Turner's highly-touted book, The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern California, which offers an in-depth examination of racial and ethnic demographics in the Los Angeles area using 1990 U.S. Census information.

Drawing from 2000 Census information, Allen and Turner in Changing Faces, Changing Places are able to paint a picture of the Los Angeles region -- which they say includes San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, Ventura and Los Angeles counties -- that is both more ethnically mixed and yet separated at the same time.

"Apart from understanding recent change in Southern California for its own sake, we expect that many of our findings are applicable in a general way to other large metropolitan areas in the United States," Allen and Turner said. "The urban changes occurring here also characterize many other metropolitan areas, but the very large absolute numbers of Latinos and Asians in our region are exceptional. Such large populations may make incipient trends and patterns more visible or evident here than in other metropolitan areas where those numbers are smaller.

"This means also that what has been happening here regarding ethnic relations and patterns is likely to happen elsewhere."

Among the book's findings:

• During the 1990s, whites and blacks became more mixed residentially with other groups. The level of black residential separation from whites has dropped steadily since 1970: 50 percent of blacks in Southern California now live in tracts that are less than 20 percent black. As in the 1980s, blacks have dispersed into suburbs -- particularly in Riverside and San Bernardino counties -- from historic concentrations like South Central Los Angeles.

• Central Americans and Filipinos became more mixed residentially with other groups. This change reflects the cultural and economic assimilation of these groups into the mainstream American society and the partial breakdown of white exclusiveness.

• Latinos, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese tended to cluster more in neighborhoods (enclaves) with others of their own group than they did in 1990. Such increased clustering characterized groups with higher proportions of recent immigrants, who typically want to live near friends and relatives.

• Groups tend to be more mixed residentially in new suburbs, such as in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. The authors think that these areas are the places where the new American society is being shaped.

• The growth of Asian enclaves in more affluent suburbs is a major trend of the 1990s. Because Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese moving into such neighborhoods have the financial resources to live in many places, it is essentially their choice to live near others in their group. This is strong evidence that in contemporary Southern California, ethnic group clustering in enclaves is more voluntary than coercive.

• Although racism and racial discrimination were key determinants of residential distributions 30 or 40 years ago, their influence on ethnic distributions is much less today. The maintenance and expansion of ethnic enclaves today reflects, apart from financial limitations, the residential preferences of people rather than the result of restrictions imposed by a racist white society.

Many findings are more detailed -- such as the decline during the 1990s of the white population in all counties except Riverside; the increasing residential separation in some types of neighborhoods in outer suburbs of Palmdale, Lancaster and the Inland Empire; the increasing multiethnic Asian enclaves in Torrance, Irvine, Cerritos and the East San Gabriel Valley; the decline of Latinos in Monterey Park and in parts of Glendale as the result of in-movement by Chinese and Armenians respectively; and the ethnic effect of gentrification in Venice.

The book has been hailed by educators and state leaders as a valuable tool for understanding Southern California.

Herb J. Wesson, speaker of the California State Assembly, called Changing Faces, Changing Places, "a very clear and penetrating examination of our racial diversity. A must-have publication for anyone attempting to better understand us Southern Californians."

George Sanchez, director of the program in American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California, called the book "an absolutely critical guide for anyone interested in the rapidly changing dynamics of Southern California at the turn of the 21st century."

Changing Faces, Changing Places is available in the university's bookstore or through CSUN's Center for Geographical Studies. To find out more about the book or to buy a copy, visit the Web site www.csun.edu/geography/pubs.html or call (818) 677-3527.

California State University, Northridge has more than 32,500 full- and part-time students and offers 59 bachelor's and 41 master's degrees as well as 28 education credential programs. Founded in 1958, it is the only four-year university in the San Fernando Valley and the third largest in the 23-campus CSU system. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges recently said CSUN "stands as a model to other public urban institutions of higher education."