Three cities, three dead urban unicorn renewal projects. In just the past few days, we’ve had Foxconn renege on Wisconsin, Amazon renege on NYC, and GE renege on Boston. Each followed the Anna Karenina principle that every unhappy economic development deal is unhappy in its own way: for Foxconn, it was trade tariffs and slowing […]
View More Urban unicorn renewalCategory: Economic Development
HQ2 fight continues as New York City and Seattle officials hold anti-Amazon summit
The heated debate around Amazon’s recently announced Long Island City “HQ2” is showing no signs of cooling down. On Monday morning, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) hosted a briefing in which labor officials, economic development analysts, Amazon employees and elected New York State and City representatives further underlined concerns around the HQ2 […]
View More HQ2 fight continues as New York City and Seattle officials hold anti-Amazon summitAmazon did exactly what it should have with its HQ2 process
I love my colleague Jon Shieber, he’s a great guy. But his arguments against Amazon’s HQ2 process are just wrong, and are part of an increasingly poisonous atmosphere around employment growth and prosperity in America. Our normally-scheduled analysis of AI and semiconductors will (hopefully) restart tomorrow. We are experimenting with new content forms at TechCrunch. […]
View More Amazon did exactly what it should have with its HQ2 processYes, cities should indeed fight for tech jobs
Few events have jolted the urban planning crowd quite like Amazon’s process for selecting the company’s new second headquarters (dubbed HQ2). The company put up a massive carrot of 50,000 jobs and $5 billion in investment, and then proceeded to demand proposals from cities across North America (lovingly written up by Clickhole). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Amazon received 238… Read More
View More Yes, cities should indeed fight for tech jobs