This is a three-paper dissertation on placemaking, urban space, and the Southeast Asian American (SEAA) experience in San Francisco. The first part is a quantitative spatial study of SEAA demographic patterns in the San Francisco Bay Area, the second part is an archival study of community formation through the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation archives, and the third part is a volunteer ethnography with a community organization. Part 1 explores three methods of reporting residential patterns: (1) concentration profiles, (2) density maps, and (3) proximity profiles. I analyze U.S. Census data to map and evaluate the residential patterns for Southeast Asian Americans in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. Drawing from the field of urban planning, I report two measures of segregation and concentration (a) dissimilarity indices and (b) spatial proximity indices, and I discuss their limitations. Since mapping and spatial statistics are essential to understanding the histories, development, and advancement of Southeast Asian American communities, it is important to promote their broad usage. The paper's findings lend evidence to three arguments: (1) pioneering moments (the establishment of new immigrant communities) can in fact start path dependent community growth, (2) clustering and dispersion to some extent can be predicted by classic theories of spatial assimilation, but new dynamics are playing out in today’s communities from Asian and Latino origins, including Southeast Asian American communities, and (3) residential clustering cases are circumstantial, dependent on unique local circumstances. Part 2 draws from Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC) archival materials, housed in the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library, to present a case study of how the SEAA residents and a collection of actors collectively affected the local Southeast Asian American space (1980–2000). This article (1) examines the discourse of ‘neighborhood stabilization’ amidst housing precarity, (2) discusses the implications of refugees as ‘revitalizers’ and ‘entrepreneurs,’ and (3) documents the role of community partnerships and urban planning in building a SEAA community in the heart of San Francisco. Overall, the article argues that efforts to build affordable housing within a unique urban planning environment were instrumental in the formation of the Southeast Asian American community of San Francisco, and it demonstrates how local affordable housing and the built environment in refugee resettlement sits at the nexus of competing discourses about development and about inclusion. Part 3 documents a volunteer ethnography. Thousands of Southeast Asian American (SEAA) refugees and immigrants have called San Francisco’s Tenderloin District home, and their role in placemaking, community advancement, and cultural contributions are harbingers of future demographic dynamics in the North American metropolis. However, this community has been largely invisible in the urban planning and public policy literatures. In this ethnographic work, I document my experiences volunteering with a nonprofit and advocacy organization (referred to as The Center) that has served the SEAA community for several decades. Through these experiences, I find that (1) The Center provides a concrete anchor for the community, consistent with recent urban planning literature on placemaking, (2) the organizational motivations and self-narrative helps staff to confront logistical and contextual challenges, and (3) that volunteerism brings pragmatic resources and provides a critical lens for documenting and recording the history of the organization. The case study illustrates key elements of the political-economy of the social service industry in which the dynamics of immigrant placemaking, community advancement, and urban politics coalesce.