Little Phnom Penh, Long Beach, California

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Cambodia Town (also known as Little Phnom Penh or Little Cambodia) is the unofficial name for a roughly one mile long business corridor along Anaheim Street between Alamitos and Junipero avenues in Long Beach, California. This area has numerous Cambodian restaurants, clothing stores, and jewelry stores. Churches, temples, and service centers for Cambodian-Americans are also found in the area. In addition, there are many more general businesses in the area, such as auto repair shops, that are also Cambodian-owned.

With approximately 50,000 Cambodians in Long Beach and surrounding communities^{[citation needed]}, Long Beach is home to the second largest population of Cambodian immigrants outside of Cambodia (after Paris, France), and the city has its own Cambodian consulate. Many of the Cambodians in Long Beach came to the United States as refugees from the Maoist regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 (see The Killing Fields), as well as the 1978 occupation of Cambodia by Vietnam.

The City of Long Beach also has an annual Cambodian New Year celebration.

[edit] The quest for official recognition

Since 2001, some local Cambodian community activists have been working to get Long Beach city council approval to officially designated the Anaheim Street corridor as "Cambodia Town". Other community activists have preferred the name of "Little Phnom Penh".

There have also been individuals who have questioned any official designation for the area, saying that it could likely increase the Cambodian-Latino rivalry in the area, and the official recognization for a single ethnic community could also be divisive in the ethnically diverse city of Long Beach. As of 25 October 2006, the city council has voted for a 90-day review period to allow more input from the community. ^[1] ^[2]