Reimagining Cities-Disrupting the Urban Doom Loop

Downtown Seattle thrived in the first 20 years of this century . Between 2001 and 2020, overall employment increased by 18%, and office-using jobs grew by 29%. 46 The office stock in Seattle’s CBD increased by approximately 50%, adding 19.3 msf of new office space. Companies were quick to lease that space, as overall absorption totaled 20.9 msf in the 20 years before the pandemic. When Amazon sought a second headquarters (HQ2), their request for qualifications generated 238 responses from cities and counties across North America. The two finalists were both WalkUPs: Long Island City across the East River in Queens, NYC, and National Landing, a transit-oriented WalkUP in Arlington, VA that had been struggling due to the loss of federal agencies and government contractors in the wake of the Base Realignment and Closure Act. The Long Island City bid was withdrawn due to public opposition to massive subsidies for a multibillion-dollar company, leading Amazon to choose Arlington. The Arlington bid was one-third the size of the Long Island City bid and nearly all parts of the bid focused on self-investment in Arlington (e.g., a new train station, converting a freeway to a boulevard, $1 billion university innovation campus with 600,000 sf of new education space, a walking bridge to National Airport, etc.). In the five years since HQ2 came to Arlington, no public incentives have been provided to Amazon. In addition, Amazon voluntarily set up a $2 billion affordable housing fund for the Washington metropolitan area. The lesson here is that knowledge economy corporate relocations demand walkable urban places and amenities to attract knowledge workers, not necessarily hefty incentive packages . Overcoming a Structural Doom Loop: Pittsburgh By 1980, global economic forces had shuttered much of the American steel industry, and 75% of Pittsburgh’s steelmaking capacity vanished. With 130,000 manufacturing jobs lost and unemployment at 18%, Western Pennsylvania effectively experienced a second Great Depression. 47

The impact of tech headquarters on Seattle can be compared by looking at Microsoft and Amazon. When Microsoft came to Seattle, urban disinvestment was widespread. Microsoft established its headquarters in a Drivable Sub-urban business park in Redmond, 16 miles east of downtown Seattle. Amazon, founded later, settled in the Downtown Adjacent South Lake Union WalkUP in the early 2000s, a major walkable urban redevelopment pioneered by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his development firm, Vulcan. Microsoft has since been transforming downtown Redmond into a suburban town center WalkUP, urbanizing its suburban location. Both tech headquarters are now in WalkUPs, but they got there through different paths.

46 Lightcast 47 Andes, Scott, Mitch Horowitz, Ryan T. Helwig, and Bruce Katz. “Capturing the next economy: Pittsburgh’s rise as a global innovation city.” Brookings, 2017.

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