According to newly released US census data for 2010-2017 – which Brookings analyzed here – the “back to the city” movement appears to have peaked in 2012. (This is something that we’ve looked at before on the blog.)

Here is a graph from Brookings showing the annual growth rate for urban and suburban counties. Note how growth in the “urban core” peaked in 2012 and how growth in both the “emerging suburb” and “exurb” have increased since then.

The other finings from Brookings are that growth has slowed in large metropolitan areas (small metro areas and non metro areas, on the other hand are up) and that people are continuing to move from the Snow Belt to the Sun Belt.

If you look at population gains and losses from 2016-2017 for the 100 largest US metro areas, the only Snow Belt gainers within the top 20 are New York (15th), Columbus (19th), and Boston (20th). Dallas, a Sun Belt city, was first with a gain of 146,000 people.

So what’s going on? The narrative is that soon as the US economy and housing market recovered from the Great Recession of 2008, the trend lines simply reverted back to business as usual: sun and sprawl.

Sidewalk Toronto is currently looking for “12 smart, creative, and caring people who are interested in the future of Toronto’s waterfront and how we [Sidewalk Toronto] can responsibly incorporate technology to improve urban life.”

Each Fellow will complete a 2-day orientation session in Toronto; 6 days in Amsterdam and Copenhagen; 5 days in New York City and Boston; 3 days in Vancouver; and then do a final 2-day working session back in Toronto before presenting their takeaways.

This feels like a response to the criticism that Sidewalk Toronto wasn’t doing enough to listen to the community and that it simply wanted to build a tech-infused neighborhood that could serve us more ads – but it’s cool nonetheless. 

If you’re between 19-24 years old and you live in Toronto, you can apply here. It sounds like a fun opportunity for young city builders. I know that I certainly would have been all over it when I was in that age bracket.

Amazon released its shortlist of HQ2 cities this morning. Below are the 20 metropolitan areas. They were selected from 238 bids, so this shortlist represents 8.4% of the original pool.

• Atlanta, GA

• Austin, TX

• Boston, MA

• Chicago, IL

• Columbus, OH

• Dallas, TX

• Denver, CO

• Indianapolis, IN

• Los Angeles, CA

• Miami, FL

• Montgomery County, MD

• Nashville, TN

• Newark, NJ

• New York City, NY

• Northern Virginia, VA

• Philadelphia, PA

• Pittsburgh, PA

• Raleigh, NC

• Toronto, ON

• Washington D.C.

I saw some people on Twitter say that they were surprised to see Toronto and Miami on this list. I was not. If you remember, I publicly predicted on this blog that Toronto would be selected for Amazon HQ2.

That said, I thought it would be fun to guess at an even shorter list from Amazon’s shortlist. I have no knowledge of Amazon’s actual selections process, but if I had to guess, here is who I would cross off the list:

• Atlanta, GA

• Austin, TX

• Boston, MA

• Chicago, IL

• Columbus, OH

• Dallas, TX

• Denver, CO

• Indianapolis, IN

• Los Angeles, CA

• Miami, FL

• Montgomery County, MD

• Nashville, TN

• Newark, NJ

• New York City, NY

• Northern Virginia, VA

• Philadelphia, PA

• Pittsburgh, PA

• Raleigh, NC

• Toronto, ON

• Washington D.C.

That leaves us with a list that looks like this:

1. Boston, MA
   

2. Miami, FL
   

3. Montgomery County, MD

4. Newark, NJ
   

5. Northern Virginia, VA
   

6. Toronto, ON
   

7. Washington D.C.

So why this list? I’m probably wrong, but my reasons are as follows:

- I think Amazon will opt for a metro area on eastern time.

- There seems to be a predilection for areas around Washington D.C., so I left Montgomery County and Northern Virginia. 

- As wonderful as it is, New York City feels too center ice for Amazon – at least in my view. But maybe Newark places them in the catchment area.

- The area needs to be of a certain scale so Amazon doesn’t overpower it and they have enough human capital to draw from.

- Miami is my sleeper bet. Most people think of it simply as a resort town, but there’s a huge percentage of foreign born residents and powerful arts/design scene.

- Talent is number one, which is why I left Boston and Toronto and why I continue to believe in Toronto. Toronto is more dynamic than Boston.

If I had to pick just three from the above shortlist, my bets would be, in alphabetical order: Boston, Toronto, and Washington D.C. What are yours?