So I was wrong. Amazon didn’t pick Toronto for HQ2. It instead picked Crystal City, Virginia (Washington) and Long Island City, NY (New York City). More on that, here, in the NY Times. Confession: My prognostication was at least partially about trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In any event, it’s interesting to consider the locations that they did pick – as well as the fact that they ended up picking multiple cities. This was not part of their RFP. Though, many have convincingly argued that this process was over before it even began. HQ2 was always going to end up on the east coast, near one of Bezos’ homes.

Nevertheless, urbanists such as Aaron Renn took the announcement as a direct repudiation of the American heartland. He believed that Amazon would be far more cost conscious in their decision making and ultimately elect for a lower cost locale in the middle of the country. Instead, the coastal hegemony won out. 

Joe Cortright of City Observatory correctly predicted that Amazon would, for a few reasons, parlay their HQ2 search into multiple smaller locations (HQ2, HQ3, and so on). One of the reasons for this is that it gives the company more leverage when it comes negotiating subsidies on a go-forward basis. If NYC doesn’t want our next round of hires, we’ll take them to Washington.

Looking at the locations, one of the first things I noticed is that both are just outside of their respective “downtowns” (across a body of water), as well as adjacent or on the way to an international airport. Crystal City is across the street from DCA and Long Island City is a 15 minute drive from LGA. Both are situated on top of higher order transit. Makes sense to me.

Now, who wants HQ4?

Years ago Aaron Renn coined an urban paradigm that he labeled “the new donut.” The old donut, of course, is one that many of you will know well: poor downtown (hole in the donut) and wealthy suburbs (ring around the hole in the donut). This is a well documented phenomenon in many American cities.

The new donut reflects today’s return to city centers. It is the filling in – albeit only partially – of the middle of the donut. The reason I say only partially is because the data clearly suggests that, in many cases, there’s now a trough between the immediate core and the outer suburbs. 

In 2015, the University of Virginia published a study called The Changing Shape of American Cities. It looked at things like educational attainment and per capita income in 1990 and then compared it to more recent 2012-2015 data. But most significantly, it plotted this data against “miles from city center.” (I discovered this study via City Observatory.)

Here are educational attainment and per capita income for the 50 largest metro areas in the US. The orange line is 1990 data. The brown line is 2012 data. And the blue line is 2015 data. The x-axis is “miles from city center.”

Compared to 1990, it is clear that there has been noticeable spike in education and income in city centers. For the above composite index, more than 50% of adults over 25 now have a bachelor’s degree. But it has also accentuated the trough that appears to sit, on average, about 5 miles out from the center. 

In some metro areas, such as Charlotte (shown below), there has almost been a complete inversion. Education and income were highest 5 to 10 miles out from the center, but that has since flipped, along with a dramatic spike right in the center.

This is the new donut. If you’d like to see the graphs for all 66 American cities that form part of the study, you can do that here. 

I am reading up on a few different things this morning.

Southwest Florida, which is where I am right now, is in the midst of a “red tide” that began last November. These happen fairly regularly along the Gulf Coast, but this one is high up on the severity scale. There doesn’t appear to be a clear explanation for what causes them, but sustained warmer temperatures and fertilizer and other pollutant runoff are thought to stoke it. Whatever the cause, they are devastating to the environment. We are switching coasts tomorrow morning.

Portland now has electric scooters. (Why don’t we have these in Toronto?) But to combat possible concerns around urban clutter, the company, Bird, has committed to collecting all of its scooters each night and has agreed to remit $1 per scooter per day to the city. These scooters are pissing off some cities (or maybe it’s just San Francisco), but I still believe the problem will eventually get resolved. City Observatory also has this interesting piece where it compares the above scooter pricing to car pricing. Are we underpricing cars?

Finally, here is a short film on civic security in Paris. In an effort to mitigate terrorism, the city has, of course, been implementing and erecting fencing, barricades and other reactive security measures. But sadly, now that this has become a new reality, the capital is spending more time considering how these measures could be more thoughtfully designed. The video showcases some of them. Certainly a more deliberate approach, but are they just as reactive?

Maybe one of these topics will be of interest to you too.

Photo by Andreas Selter on Unsplash