Dear Amazon, We Picked Your New Headquarters for You

Philadelphia doesn't have tech scene like SF or Seattle, but it's well positioned for the next generation for several reasons.

Philadelphia has among the best, or the best, medical institutions associated with upenn and the children's hospital of Philadelphia, and both have signaled that they're very amenable to startups and new ideas. If you wanted to build a medical tech company that's not in San Francisco or Boston, it's great. It has a lot of extraordinary livability: extremely walkable, great public transit, and affordable. And while I'm not defending our politics per se, it agrees with the politics of many developers in NYC and the bay area. It has phenomenal art and food scene that's not copying other cities.

Developers in NYC tired of paying absurd prices for rent would move here in a heartbeat for the right job (and other opportunities if that fell through). In Williamsburg, my grad school roommate and I paid 2400 (plus broker fees) for a 500-700 sq foot apartment, each bedroom big enough to hold a queen sized bed + 3 feet, and a "kitchen/living room" (I'm being generous) that housed a loveseat and not much else. And it wasn't fancy, by any stretch: a five floor walkup with an alley view. It was still 30-80 minutes to work depending on the time of day. In Philadelphia you could live within walking distance to anywhere for half to 2/3 that in a much nicer apartment or townhome: check Zillow/Redfin/Apartments.com if you'd like a fair comparison. Good suburbs are 20-30 minutes by car and 40 minutes by trains that come every 10-20 minutes.

The biggest downside is that there are not as many backup tech jobs, but compared with Chicago, I see it much easier to bring developers here. The ease of moving here is not hard: I travel to NYC 2-3 days/week, the bus is 10 dollars and takes 2 hours to 6th/Grand, the train is 45 dollars and takes 70 - 90 minutes.

Reporting results you know are flawed is not the correct response to discovering that it's impossible to get non-flawed results.

Nashua New Hampshire.

- Easy reverse commute from Boston

- Easy access to Boston schools

- New Hampshire is a business friendly state

- Plenty of cheap office space

- No income or sales tax

And, if a larger[1] company moves into the area it will make the commuter rail to Boston project the city has been trying to push a no brainer.

It is even already in one of the highlighted areas of the article (the Boston highlighted region covers Nashua).

[1] It is already home to the headquarters an entire large subdivision of BAE Systems, as well an Oracle office, EMC, Fidelity, and an Amazon distribution center.

Houston was eliminated as not having enough white collar workers. Yet they left in Austin which is far smaller because at least 12.5 % base of their base has the right skills.

It makes sense to compare desired jobs versus the general population but not without context. Seriously with six million+ people here, do you really need 12.5% or 750,000 of them to be what Amazon would consider hiring when they only need 50,000 people?

I find the idea absurd: Amazon could fill their entire job quota out of the current worker pool.

But ultimately they are probably right, Denver deserves it. Great quality of life, smart governance, good markets, healthy living and room to grow. Lots of people moving to Denver just like Seattle so it is very close to the same style of city. It is very, very easy to attract people to Denver.