Working-Class Institutions, Amazon and The Politics of Local Economic Development in Western Queens

Abstract

In November 2018 Amazon announced that they had selected Long Island City, Queens (LIC) as one of two locations for their second headquarters. While there had certainly been criticism and organizing against the proposed deal, given that it had the vocal support of both Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo, most New Yorkers had assumed that the deal would be implemented. Then, rather surprisingly, on February 14th, 2019, Amazon announced its withdrawal from the deal and its decision not to come to LIC. This article uses the case of Amazon and other large scale developments in western Queens to discuss the conflictual and often messy politics of local economic development (LED) in working class communities. It argues that urban studies pays too little attention to how and why working class organizations participate in the politics of LED; and often thereby shape the enacted policies of LED.

Community Benefits Through an Anchor: Contestations During the Planning of the Obama Presidential Center

“…The other non-interview data supplements my interviews. While I do not solely focus on city-level policymaking in terms of government processes (DeFilippis and Stein 2022), the analysis shows how approval of the OPC depended on City support. Before turning to the findings, I situate the OPC in the Woodlawn neighborhood and describe the CBA campaign.…”

An Introduction to Volume 59, Issue 4

“…If Kusevski, Stalevska, and Valli (2023) offer one glimpse of LED strategies in one set of unique locations—neighborhoods in large Swedish cities—DeFilippis and Stein (2023) offer a very different view, focusing on the role of local working-class organizations such as unions, in the Queens borough of New York City, with respect to Amazon's provisional decision to locate a new headquarters in the borough's Long Island City neighborhood—a decision it subsequently reversed as it faced resistance. The authors portray a fragmented landscape of working-class organizations and analyze why some unions and nonprofits supported the Amazon deal while others did not; they find that answers are not neatly explained by the nature of the organizations.…”

“…The authors portray a fragmented landscape of working-class organizations and analyze why some unions and nonprofits supported the Amazon deal while others did not; they find that answers are not neatly explained by the nature of the organizations. Instead, DeFilippis and Stein (2023) focus on the contingency of “politics, culture, and strategy” (p. 1097) which imbued various organizations with various and sometimes conflicting motivations and strategies, even as they worked with one another. Thus, in contrast to a mechanistic analysis that might ascribe specific motivations to specific types of organizations, “We consistently find that the organizations’ mission (which for unions includes defending the industry or industries they are in), structure, and political relationships are central to how organizations responded.…”