Leading urbanist Richard Florida is convinced Amazon HQ2 won’t go to a suburb

But Richard Florida, among the world’s leading urbanist scholars, believes they might be backing the incorrect horse. Florida is Director of Cities in the University of Toronto and also works with New York University and Florida International University. He’s written two books and countless articles on urbanism in the modern age and functions as editor-at-large for CityLab. Florida has monitored Amazon’s hunt for another headquarters city carefully because the firm declared its HQ2 strategies in September 2017. Like many analysts, he too considers the Washington, D.C., metro region has the best opportunities for HQ2 — he just doesn’t think it’ll be Northern Virginia. “I believe D.C. is the front-runner,” Florida said in a meeting with GeekWire. “I still don’t think that it’s going to attend a suburb. I believe that it will go to a location such as the Anacostia waterfront. It is going to go to a very interesting urban region served by transit” But, Florida wants you to carry that prediction with a grain of salt. The business wishes to be in a location that brings young, creative talent. While other Seattle-area tech giants such as Microsoft and Expedia constructed traditional corporate arenas in the suburbs, Amazon decided to grow from the city’s urban center.   Why would you go to another city and choose those incentives and, in consequence, help to bankrupt it? It makes no more sense. “We might have constructed a suburban campus. I believe that it would have been the wrong decision,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a 2014 bank meeting. He explained the kinds of people Amazon uses and attempts to recruit”appreciate the energy and dynamism of an urban environment.” Amazon says that its second headquarters will result in a $5 billion investment from the city in which it’s built. The centre will have room for as many as 50,000 high-paid tech employees, mirroring Amazon’s first Seattle headquarters. That guaranteed economic energy has towns competing with one another to land HQ2. A lot of those contenders are offering economic incentives, which Amazon included in its request for proposals to the undertaking. Florida has been among the most vocal critics of Amazon’s taste for incentives because the organization published its RFP. He thinks that looking taxpayer dollars is counterproductive because the things that produce a city a gift magnet come from”public investment in schools that are great and transit programs, and density, and more parks, and school programs.” “Why do you go to another city and choose those incentives and, in consequence, help to bankrupt it? It makes no more sense,” he explained. “So why not say,’maintain the incentives. We are going to cover our fair share of taxation. We wish to work together to handle these issues of transit, congestion and traffic, and housing affordability and homelessness. We are going to be partners in this’ I believe this plays. It’s rounding error in their earnings test also it makes the world a better place” The district appropriate is about the list as well as a single suburb at Maryland and another in Virginia. The rest of the record includes a mix of big cities, such as New York and Chicago, and bigger metros, such as Pittsburgh and Austin. Amazon intends to show the city chosen for HQ2 at the end of this year. Florida, for his role, is optimistic that Amazon will be a excellent corporate citizen within the next stage of its evolution as a corporation. “I do think Amazon has long been a revolutionary company in several respects,” he explained. It has long been an urban business. It’s the sort of company I am likely to like. I’d like to see them do the right thing” To Florida, that means turning the incentives cities are offering.  “That would alter the match,” he explained.

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