AMES, IOWA – Gerardo Sandoval, Iowa State University assistant professor of community and regional planning, wrote a new book about the revitalization of a downtown Los Angeles immigrant community. Information in the book, however, indicates similar global relationships are at play in rural Iowa's meatpacking communities, according to an Iowa State University press release.

Towns like Perry and Postville, Iowa, which have growing immigrant populations, are on "the cutting edge of globalization," he said. Mr. Sandoval's book, titled "Immigrants and the Revitalization of Los Angeles: Development and Change in MacArthur Park," explains how a distressed, low-income immigrant neighborhood turned a large-scale redevelopment project to its advantage. The book is based on Sandoval's doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, which received the 2009 Barclay Gibbs Jones Award for Best Dissertation in Planning from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.

"The same mechanisms, economic structures and influences bring immigrants to large cities and to small towns," Mr. Sandoval said. "Here in Iowa, it's all on a smaller scale, a microcosm of what I saw in Los Angeles.

"In Iowa, however, these trends are magnified and you can easily see and measure the economic, social and cultural impacts that immigrants have on these towns," he added.

"The people who are reinvesting in these towns are the Latino immigrants. They build their own stores, and open new businesses that cater directly to the immigrants," he continued.

Postville, Iowa, home to the nation's largest, kosher meatpacking plant, was greatly affected in May 2008 during the largest immigration raid in U.S. history. Nearly 400 undocumented workers were arrested. Most were deported; others detained.