2019 Articles

A Tale of Long Island City: Between Industrialization, Innovation, and Gentrification

Scherling, Laura S.

Recently, approximately 25,000 Amazon employees were poised to move to New York to work in a new corporate campus, HQ2, in Long Island City (LIC), New York. The social and economic outcomes of such a change on LIC were largely unexplored and loudly debated, and in a highly-publicized reversal Amazon announced on February 14th, 2019 that it was canceling its plans for the campus. This takes place during a period in which LIC has already experienced rapid growth—with development of its key commercial corridors, Jackson Avenue and Queens Plaza, rehabilitation of its waterfront along the Anable Basin, and proposed incentives to retain arts and cultural spaces and initiatives.