Roosevelt Avenue parts the heart of Queens, the huge borough of New York. From Jackson Heights up to Flushing, the avenue is the spine of an interconnection of micro enclaves. Quietly the initial symptoms of a gentrification process are in act. Few of the old retail spaces along the Avenue have been already cleared to make way for new stores and shops of all types: grocery, drug and pharmacy chain, fancy PCs and phones as well as modern style cafes and condos. At the same time as most disadvantaged immigrants started to being pushed out as leases expire, the area is now being subject to an increasing influx of mid-class young families, singles, professionals relocating on their turn from those areas of Manhattan that more suffered from an intensive upscaling process. A sort of “counter white flight”, that induces a domino effect, from Manhattan (occasionally passing also through Astoria, Roosevelt Island or Slope) down to the bottom of Queens.
