Penn IUR Experts Weigh in on Amazon Competition

 

In September 2017, Amazon announced that it would build a second headquarters, equal to its Seattle campus, in some North American city. In response, 238 cities from 43 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, seven Canadian provinces, and three Mexican states submitted proposals to host the new headquarters, nicknamed “HQ2”. Amazon just released a list of 20 finalists for the competition, and has said it will announce the winning city “sometime in 2018.” In the meantime, urban experts are discussing the enormous ramifications that HQ2 could have on the selected city.

 

Contributors include: Timothy Bartik, Penn IUR Fellow and Senior Economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute;  Angela Glover Blackwell, Penn IUR Fellow and CEO of PolicyLink;  Richard Florida, Penn IUR Scholar and University Professor and Director of Cities at the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute; Amy Gutmann, President of the University of Pennsylvania; Amy Liu, Vice President of the Brookings Institution and director of its Metropolitan Policy Program; Arthur C. Nelson, Penn IUR Scholar and Professor of Urban Planning and Real Estate Development at the University of Arizona; Jeremy Nowak, Penn IUR Fellow and Advisory Board Member; Frederick Steiner, Penn IUR Faculty Fellow and Dean and Paley Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design; Mark Strauss, enior Partner at FXFOWLE Architects; Tom Wright, president of Regional Plan Association, and Mark Zandi, Penn IUR Fellow and chief economist of Moody’s Analytics.

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