It's amazing. All of those months of speculation about what secondary city or emerging tech hub will become the next Austin, gone just like that, in favor of Amazon deciding to set up shop in the super-obvious capitals of finance and government.
They aren't looking to build up a city. It's a foolish business decision to put something with the needs of HQ2 in a place with no transit. Sure, you can build transit, but A - it's expensive, and B - it's not your job or expertise.
Instead of lamenting the jobs they missed out on with HQ2, a forward thinking city would get to work building out its transit system. Many cities are doing just that. Houston for instance.
If places like Columbus or Nashville have a better strategy than building attractive infrastructure for competing with places like Houston and NYC for such jobs, then let them pursue that strategy. The market will settle the issue in the end.
You're ascribing moral judgment to my post. I'm not criticizing for taking potential jobs away from a secondary city. Playing host to an HQ2 is both a big boon and a great curse; witness all the articles about Amazon's impact on prospective cities' real estate markets and traffic. But my specific criticism is in questioning why did Bezos put on this charade to evaluate cities throughout North America, if he was just going to choose the obvious choices? The only more unimaginative city than NYC and Washington DC, would be to build HQ2 in the Bay Area itself.
Was this all a ploy to test how far local governments be willing to bend over for Amazon? A PR spectacle to show how important and influential Amazon is to warrant that kind of kowtowing from mayors and governors? If you're going to claim that Amazon earnestly pursued the search for HQ2, only to decide that NYC and D.C. were the best choices at the end, then their strategists must have done a poor job in not figuring that out before the city talent show.
And for us HN commentators: these picks are just boring. So much for innovation, imagination, and daring. Ho-hum.
Maybe they shouldn't have framed the contest as finding "a city that is excited to work with us and where our customers, employees, and the community can all benefit", but rather a purely financial and strategic decision that would take their analysts less than a day to wrap up.
