Ethnicity

Ethnicity in the United States can be determined by a variety of factors, including racial characteristics, linguistic association, national/regional ancestry, or even religion in some cases. Ethnic landscapes are interesting sources of information about value systems and cultural ideas/behaviors of the groups that produce them. Some ethnic landscapes are fully authentic and robust. Other ethnic landscapes are designed to attract tourists, often by exaggerating features of the built environment most expected by tourists. Ethnicity is expressed more fully in architecture in the folk/rural environment than it is in urban environments where ethnic immigrants often occupy homes, shops and other buildings originally constructed by a different ethnicity.