It is clear that one has to go and look. A telephone directory will miss some of these churches, and it will not tell you anything about what the storefront looks like, what it says, or what is in its immediate neighborhood, or whether the church is moribund or active. Most of these churches are not affiliated with any denomination, so there is no centralized place to which they belong. My goal is to change how they are perceived, from being curiosities or marginal places, to being seen as crucial and central to city life. Tentatively, I want to argue that here we have a system of institutions without a center, societal infrastructure without deliberate planning or governance.
Sectarianism leads to entrepreneurship.
In urban planning terms, we have here the adaptive reuse of otherwise more or less abandoned places. Compared to established churches, with denominational affiliations and special purpose buildings, these storefront churches are part of the informal sector. The urban fabric is put together one thread at a time by many weavers, at least in these cases, putting a lie to the common talk about massification in a big city. What Los Angeles provides is a dynamic environment, with many immigrant groups, new and established, and many areas which are comparatively down at the heels. It is just in these places where there is both a demand for a particular form of worship and the possibility of having a place in which that can be established.