There's a bit of history between the current state and the original Dutch settlements.
Unlike Brooklyn, which was its own independent city for a while before merging into New York City, Queens was a county consisting of several distinct towns. So for example Flushing and Long Island city were two separate municipalities. It's not too surprising that they were developed differently.
What I think is more fascinating is just how enormous Queens actually is. I've always wanted to learn more about why it seemed like a good idea to unify such a large area into one physical city. Same goes for Staten Island. Would be really interesting to read some primary sources from the time.
The major impetus for unification was the promise to build the subway. Manhattan had the money but needed the land, Brooklyn and Queens had land but not the wealth.
Once upon a time Flushing was hyper religious Quakers. When the NY & Flushing RR was built (today the Port Washington branch of LIRR), one of the anecdotes in its history was the moral outcry when they tried to run a single train per day on Sunday. They appointed actual fun police to make sure no rowdy drunkards would dare come to their town hoping to have a good time. What do they think this is, Brooklyn? LIC was literally built by and for the railroads. Before the tunnels into Manhattan (1906 IIRC), you would get off the LIRR (or other competing services which were later bought out) and switch to a ferry to cross the East river at Hunters Point. LIC was always de facto colonization by Manhattanites.
> Once upon a time Flushing was hyper religious Quakers.
That's not surprising given that the town of Vlissingen that it is named after in NL is also in part of what is called the Dutch Bible Belt. Zeeland has a very strong religious tradition, even today. Likely those that came to America and named their town Flushing (likely phonetically much closer to Vlissingen in those days) were from there.
Unlike Brooklyn, which was its own independent city for a while before merging into New York City, Queens was a county consisting of several distinct towns. So for example Flushing and Long Island city were two separate municipalities. It's not too surprising that they were developed differently.
What I think is more fascinating is just how enormous Queens actually is. I've always wanted to learn more about why it seemed like a good idea to unify such a large area into one physical city. Same goes for Staten Island. Would be really interesting to read some primary sources from the time.