I mean, look at the affordable housing crisis in Seattle right now. This is part of the reason Amazon is creating a 2nd HQ, as Seattle is making it difficult for them to expand.
Despite the general population density in NYC, parts of LIC are kind of a dead zone right now (thanks in part fo poor public transit access). There’s definitely good to be had there.
The best case scenario is that the Amazon taxes provide funding for better public transit infrastructure in the area. Given the way that the incentive tax breaks will likely function though, I have my doubts about that.
As somebody who works in tech in NYC, one if the big questions is: “what kind of jobs are these jobs going to be?” I’ve heard enough horror stories from Amazon employees that I’m not particularly interested in a career at Amazon, but there will definitely be effects on the job market.
Geography is making it hard for Amazon to expand. The city is bordered on two sides by water, and you can only go so far north and south until you hit another city. Everyone’s building up, soon Seattle will probably look like Manhattan.
Amazon is expanding because they can’t find enough skilled people to hire in their old location. That’s the primary reason. Everybody left Detroit, so that wouldn’t work.
And how are you going to get new people to move to Detroit, to work for you? You’d need to offer all kinds of incentives, and it would be a major blocker. Of course that has a snowballing effect and maybe after awhile you’d revitalize the entire city. Or maybe not.
Personally, I would have gone with a C-list city like Pittsburgh. Austin, or Raleigh.
Yes, but at the same time Seattle’s city council is using Amazon as an excuse for every ill in the region, while trying to impose taxes specifically against Amazon. There’s certainly room to lay some blame on Amazon for how the area’s housing has gone nuts, but it’s not like it wasn’t already a tech-heavy region. So far, I don’t think the city council’s shenanigans have cost Amazon much, but I imagine the forward-looking company can see a time over the horizon when this becomes a real money issue.
Yep. I naively thought when this was initially announced that it might end up as a win/win for a smaller, possibly Rust Belt city. Plenty of infrastructure waiting to be used with low cost of living to entice talent that wants to work for Amazon to either move in or stay in the region. In the end this was a publicity stunt and some bigger tax breaks for Amazon to land where they were planning all along.
Yeah, Pittsburgh or Raleigh would have made much more sense to me.
Thing is, if you take Bezos at his word that what they really care about is getting skilled workers, there aren’t many places that can fill out 25k technical engineering jobs, even over a matter of years.
That’s a silly thing to take him at his word for anyway. How many people in the S Lake Union office do you think are from the Seattle area?
Woo! We’re up to a C now!
Yes, “world cities” like NYC, London, Paris, Beijing are A-list.
Regional centers like Chicago, Philadelphia, Dublin, Shenzen, Bangkok, etc, are B-List.
And then prominent but local cities, like Raleigh, Pittsburgh, Munich, Phuket, Sofia, etc, they’re C-list.
Forgot Orlando.
Thanks for the laugh, it was good.
Also this is why people hate New Yorkers. Chicago and Philly same tier?
I’ll link this, a far more comprehensive and thought out listing
Now don’t you worry @stusser, New York and London get special treatment, you can retain your vanity there.
But anyone thinking Chicagonis just regional? They don’t know Chicago.
(Sorry Rich, Orlando isn’t even the top city in your state, that would be Miami)
Hell with it, everybody drop your pants, I’ll go find a ruler.
It was pretty obvious that was just my personal terminology, right? I don’t think scholars would call any city “C-list”.
Also, looks like London ain’t gonna be A-list for much longer.
But we have The Attractions. That’s how everyone here pronounces that, with the caps. :)
You’re referring to strip clubs, right?
Massage parlors.
Raleigh is incapable of handling it. We’re choking on our own traffic and housing situation as it is, and it’s crippling. Amazon would just be throwing oil, and then water, and then more oil, onto the existing fire.
Moreover, NC is busy crippling its own education, and has been for a decade plus now. Our STEM worker shortage is abysmal, and the major tech- and otherwise STEM-adjacent firms already here in Research Triangle and Charlotte are desperate for workers; they’ve given up on the idea of “buying local” are largely just import, now.
We weren’t ever a serious choice.
Well, months ago there was a story about how Amazon was giving feedback to cities that were being eliminated early as to why they were getting cut, and a number of them had begun addressing those issues.
So hopefully it was a TOTAL waste of time.