Built an iron mine diagonal from city hub and it didn't use the city build queue to do it. However, once I placed a building next to the iron mine, the city didn't recognize it as already built, and it rebuilt the improvement all over again using the city build queue. Same thing goes for the death shard next to the iron mine. Looks like the code isn't recognizing world improvements as already built. Looks like a bug to me but maybe it's intended?