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Neither Here Nor There - Urban Omnibus

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Globally connected and stubbornly self-contained, Flushing, Queens, has never conformed to conventional planning wisdom. In the post-pandemic realm of digital dissociation and global isolation, is it more unmoored than ever?

Can a defunct Modell’s sporting goods store turned Chinese supermarket with low prices and high land values explain the last quarter century of fluctuating urban fortunes? Perhaps in a place that has never corresponded to commonplace certainties about what makes a good city. In this essay on Flushing, Queens, native son turned professional urban planner Jefferson Mao revisits the stories he’s told about the neighborhood: stubbornly self-contained, globally connected, and perennially unhip. Between the ’90s and the present, the US and China, and one end of the 7 line and the other, immigrant…

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