Newbury Park: An affluent suburbia (rewrite)

Newbury Park is a small area nestled within the Thousand Oaks city limits of Southern California. I moved to Newbury Park from Sammamish, Washington in the summer of 2003 with my family. In Sammamish, each house looked different and the backyards were huge with acres of land. The community that I grew up in in Newbury Park is called Dos Vientos and every house looks exactly the same. There are probably only ten different models that make up the hundreds of houses.

A photo of Newbury Park that I took in 2015. The backside hills of the houses provide great trails for hiking and running.

With the houses being generally nice in size, it is no surprise that the median household income is over $100,000, and only five percent of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the Census Reporter. Amgen, one of the largest biotechnology companies in the world, is located in Newbury Park and makes up for a considerable amount of the employment.

Newbury Park and its larger city of Thousand Oaks is also often ranked as one of the safest places in America, with a low death toll and crime rate. Growing up I remember hearing people say, “This is a great place to raise a family,” and that’s exactly what people do here. Suburbia.

The small area of Newbury Park, CA located within its surrounding cities.

Newbury Park has a large white population. According to the Census Reporter, nearly seven-tenths of the city’s ethnicity is white. Altough I am Asian- American, the majority of my friends and people that I relate to are white. It’s just the only thing I grew up around.

Hispanic comes in at right under twenty percent, and the Asian ethnicity is at about ten percent. There are small Mexican and Asian communities scattered throughout parts of Newbury Park, that have delicious restuarants and colorful markets.

Personally, I feel that immigration has never really been an issue in Newbury Park. Maybe I am naive or sheltered, but it is such a small city that there have not been many issues regarding an influx of different people.

My mom and I in 1991.

I was adopted when I was seven-months-old from South Korea by caucasian parents. So although I identify as Korean, when I talk about my family’s background and immigration I am speaking from their perspective because that is my family.

My mom’s family is of Jewish decent and grew up in New York City. Before that, my mother’s great-grandparents were born in Russia/Poland before coming to America. My dad’s side of the family is all German. My dad was born in Germany, and then moved to Canada with his parents and my uncle before landing in the United States.

I would like to find out if there are in fact immigration issues in Newbury Park. As I previously stated, I might just be sheltered from that aspect of the community. We all come from different backgrounds and cultures but it seems so integrated in this small community that I have never looked at it as an issue.

So that’s Newbury Park in a snapshot through my eyes. A beautiful, quiet community that I was raised in and am proud to call my home. Very sheltered, but a place where you can rub shoulders with someone with a big future. I played basketball at Newbury Park High School, sharing the same court that Jordan Cameron played on before being drafted by the NFL. I also went to school with members of The Neighbourhood, a popular rock band that has found mainstream success.

Perhaps the name of their band engulfs Newbury Park in the best way possible. Just another suburban neighborhood.