World's Most Diverse Neighborhood? -- Expert Believes Residents Could Teach Rest Of US

NEW YORK - Strolling along the bustling streets of Elmhurst-Corona is a little like walking through Beijing. And Mexico City. And Seoul. And Santo Domingo. And Port-au-Prince. And Bangkok. And Lagos.

But not exactly like any place but Elmhurst-Corona.

City planners believe this multiracial, multilingual hodgepodge of humanity - in the heart of Queens, the borough that Archie Bunker made famous - may be the world's most diverse neighborhood.

And urban anthropologist Roger Sanjek, who has studied Elmhurst-Corona for 16 years, thinks its residents' knack for getting along has a lot to teach an ever more ethnically mixed America.

Elmhurst-Corona has already experienced a change demographers predict the nation as a whole will go through in the new century - a transition to a "majority minority" makeup in which whites of European extraction make up less than half the population.

The area's 150,000 people, crowded into 2 1/2 square miles, have learned to live side by side with little of the tension that sometimes occurs when ethnic and racial groups are forced together, Sanjek said.

Trying to understand why the neighborhood works has been the big question, the Queens College professor said over tea at a Chinese bakery in Elmhurst-Corona. "Why has this been a place where things haven't fallen apart, where people aren't at each other's throats?"

Sanjek's recent book, "The Future of Us All" (Cornell University Press), credits the area's thriving grass-roots democracy, the extreme nature of its ethnic and racial mix, and residents' commitment to social harmony.

Sanjek, whose own background is Croatian and Irish, grew up in Queens but had never been to Elmhurst-Corona before starting his research in 1983. He was drawn by the area's diversity and its place in the exact middle of New York's socioeconomic structure.

The neighborhood's main commercial avenues, a short subway ride from midtown Manhattan, offer a glimpse of its multinational makeup:

David's Taiwanese Cuisine is next door to the Carniceria Colombia Meat Market and just up the street from an Islamic chicken shop, a Thai video store and a row of Bangladeshi and Pakistani kebab houses. Newsstands sell papers from India and the Caribbean, and the public library branch offers Spanish videos, Chinese magazines, and books in Bengali, Hindi and Urdu.

Men in colorful African garb stroll past women in Indian saris. Hindu and Buddhist temples share the streets with mosques, synagogues and churches.

Sanjek attended hundreds of political and civic group meetings, religious services, festivals and marches in Elmhurst-Corona. He spent thousands of hours watching and talking to people. What he saw was democracy in a form that helped residents overcome differences and join forces against problems that touched everyone, such as crime and crowded schools.

"We all need heat, we all need hot water, we all want clean streets, we want good schools for our kids," said Al Blake, vice president of the tenants association at Lefrak City, a private high-rise complex that is home to most of Elmhurst-Corona's black residents. "Those are the issues we use to come together, and in doing that we're able to address our differences."

Physical proximity also has helped neighbors see one another as individuals, not just members of an unfamiliar group.

"You have to go to the same grocery store to buy your food. You have to cross the same roadways. The kids go to the same schools," said Lucy Schilero, 47, an Italian-American civic leader who has lived in Elmhurst-Corona since she was 2. "You're going to meet, no matter what. So the bridges get built automatically."

Schilero, whose block is home to Ecuadorians, Greeks, Hungarians, Brazilians, Bangladeshis, Dominicans, Chinese and Irish, said she got three-way calling on her telephone so translators could help her talk to neighbors and plan civic events.

Elmhurst-Corona has long been home to immigrants, but until l960, most were from Europe and the neighborhood was 98 percent white. Now whites account for 18 percent of the population, according to the most recent census. Latin American immigrants make up 45 percent, and Asians make up 26 percent. Blacks, both American-born and immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, form the remainder of about 10 percent.

Black residents began entering the neighborhood in large numbers in the early 1970s, after the federal government sued to end alleged housing discrimination at the Lefrak City complex. Most Elmhurst-Corona blacks still live in the mainly middle-class towers, the most glaring example of housing segregation left in the neighborhood, Sanjek said.

Immigrants from Asia, Latin America, Africa and elsewhere began arriving around the same time. Some longtime residents resisted the influx, but that eased with time and familiarity, Sanjek said.

He thinks Elmhurst-Corona's extreme diversity has made cooperation easier than in neighborhoods like Brooklyn's Crown Heights, where blacks and Hasidic Jews clashed for several days in 1991.

"You don't feel like an outsider in this kind of community," Schilero said. "There's not one group that's bigger than the other."

Blake, the Lefrak City leader, said the neighborhood's most valuable asset may be residents' commitment to one another.

"The people who live in our area understand that we're in the boat together," he said. "We can sink together or swim together. And I think we've chosen to swim."