Aim: To look at how the concentration of ethnic communities would affect the streetscape in terms of buildings, businesses, and the display of languages.

Hypothesis: I expected that different characteristics of different ethnic groups would be reflected in the streetscape because cultures would affect architecture, types of businesses, and use of language in the community.

Firstly I acquired background information on regional ethnic population from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). There were three phenomena of population distribution that I could use to determine where the ethnic communities were concentrated: Birthplace, Ancestry, and Language Spoken at Home. I decided to use the Language Spoken at Home for this study because that indicates the culture is actively practised in the community.

I looked for suburbs in Sydney that had a high percentage of people speaking an ethnic language (according to Census 2001). I decided to survey on five suburbs, which were relatively close to where I live. Their major ethnic groups are as follows:

Bankstown — 21.5 % Arabic (incl. Lebanese); 15 % Vietnamese Burwood — 14.33 % Chinese; 7.2 % Italian Cabramatta — 31.16 % Vietnamese; 25.42 % Chinese Lakemba — 20.99 % Arabic (incl. Lebanese); 9.99 % Chinese Strathfield — 13.9 % Chinese; 9.58 % Korean

I planned to visit the above suburbs to take photos of the streetscape and count the number of shops on the main street with ethnic languages.

I also decided to go to Camden where 91.31 % of the population spoke English only. This was a suburb with very few people speaking ethnic languages. This would be used as a control group to compare with the streetscape of the five suburbs that I had chosen for the study.