, Columnist
Amazon Has Created the Blueprint for American Cities
More cities will get a slice of the tech economy as companies are less inclined to cluster.
What will the next successful cities have in common?
Photographer: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Everyone's got a theory about where Amazon should put its second North America headquarters. I came up with a list of six cities, and both Brookings and the New York Times offer well-thought-out lists of contenders. There are perhaps a dozen or more cities that would plausibly work. That fact alone is revealing.
That Amazon has such wide latitude shows the end of the "installation age" of technology, when innovation was the goal and proximity to tech peers was key. An epochal shift to the "deployment age," when established technologies become more established, will have big implications for cities and the U.S. economy.