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Immigration and gentrification – a case study of cultural restructuring in Flushing, Queens
Author(s)
Date Issued
2010
Journal
ISSN
2079-6595
Citation
Diversities, 2010, vol. 12, (1), pp. 56-69.
URI
Type
Peer Reviewed Journal Article
Abstract
The aim of this article is to introduce how culture and economics intertwine in
urban re-structuring before and after the 1990 recession in New York City by using
the case study of Flushing, Queens. My research will bring in a cultural perspective
to contribute to the understanding of gentrification as economic, social and cultural
restructuring under the impact of international immigration. First, this case of
neighbourhood transfiguration was initially triggered by a private immigrant
developer, not a cooperation, whose successes were based on factors including
Taiwanese immigrants’ residential and housing preferences in the 1980s and 1990s.
Ethnic residential preference and cultural tastes are cultural factors which
accelerated gentrification during the early 1990s recession. The residential pattern
of Asian immigrants in New York has showed the continued concentration of ethnic
enclaves since the 1980s. Secondly, there has been diversification in Flushing since
the 1980s, which is different from the kind of gentrification which creates a social,
economic, and racial hegemony in a neighbourhood. The diversification of races
and ethnicities in this neighbourhood has increased since the 1980s through the
contribution of post-1965 and later post-Cold War immigrants, especially the
settlement of Asian immigrants. We need to distinguish between gentrification that
creates homogenous racial or ethnic communities that push immigrants out, and
this new form of super-diversity gentrification, based on a transnational flow of
capital that fosters diversity and uses diversity as a form of investment capital.
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