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I honestly feel that metro deserves it the most. The city is just all around great, and it gets nowhere near enough recognition. People just mention the winters, and that's usually the end of the conversation. I moved there on a whim for a job, not expecting to like it, and I was always surprised by how great of a place it is.
It also reminds me a lot of Seattle. Transit, good airport, great universities, tons of outdoor recreation, walk/bikable, room to grow, low housing costs, great quality of life.
The thing is, that when a lot of us (in Minneapolis) look at what Seattle has become, we don't want to become that city. Another 50,000 yuppies will bid up the cost of housing for the rest of us, make our traffic worse, and make the city blander and more corporate. Minneapolis is already fine, we don't need what Amazon is offering if it means we have to pay the price Seattle has payed in terms of cost of living and quality of life. I think a lot of people here would rather have Minneapolis be the city Seattle was 25 years ago - prosperous but cheap and cool.
I would put Philly and especially Chicago further up the scale except they both share a main drawback......their murder/crime rates. Remember these workers are going to be very highly skilled and educated in a field where work is everywhere. These potential workers can get a well paying job anywhere they damn well please. It will be very hard to recruit workers from elsewhere in NA or worldwide to a city like Chicago that gets over 600 murders a year as opposed to Toronto which is larger and gets far less than one-tenth that number. Also it will be hard to convince such mobile workers to come to a city which are both declining in population. How do you convince a company they can get workers when the cities themselves can't even keep the populations they have?
This is also creates problems in terms of quality of life. Any potential city has to offer very high quality of life including an excellent K to 12 education system in the inner cities. Amazon wants to not only get the workers but equally important they want to keep them. Hard to keep workers when their kids are afraid to go to school and the schools are sub-standard.
This is why I still think it comes down to 3 main choices........Boston, Toronto, and Washington.
Uhhhhh.... uhhhhh... what?
Philadelphia is not declining lol.
Philadelphia Poulation
2010: 1,526,006
2016: 1,567,872
+2.7% growth
+41,866 people
I didn't know adding 41,000 people in 6 years was a decline.
Also, what? You knock Philadelphia for it's crime rate, then tout D.C. as a top choice, when it, ironically enough, has a higher crime rate than Philadelphia? You know crime rates are listed on City Data right? This very site you're using.
Crime Rates
Philadelphia Murder Rate: 17.9 per 100,000
Washington DC Murder Rate: 24.1 per 100,000
Philadlephia Crime Rate: 485.9 per 100,000
Washington DC Crime Rate: 591.5 per 100,000
Don't you just love people who talk but have no idea what they're talking about? Maybe you should look up some facts before posting such ignorant comments.
The thing is, that when a lot of us (in Minneapolis) look at what Seattle has become, we don't want to become that city. Another 50,000 yuppies will bid up the cost of housing for the rest of us, make our traffic worse, and make the city blander and more corporate. Minneapolis is already fine, we don't need what Amazon is offering if it means we have to pay the price Seattle has payed in terms of cost of living and quality of life. I think a lot of people here would rather have Minneapolis be the city Seattle was 25 years ago - prosperous but cheap and cool.
It would probably make MSP substantially more Asian. And 10,000 of the 50,000 would walk to work if the ratio is like ours, meaning a lot of residential infill. But yes more expensive.
I didn't know adding 41,000 people in 6 years was a decline.
Also, what? You knock Philadelphia for it's crime rate, then tout D.C. as a top choice, when it, ironically enough, has a higher crime rate than Philadelphia? You know crime rates are listed on City Data right? This very site you're using.
Crime Rates
Philadelphia Murder Rate: 17.9 per 100,000
Washington DC Murder Rate: 24.1 per 100,000
Philadlephia Crime Rate: 485.9 per 100,000
Washington DC Crime Rate: 591.5 per 100,000
Don't you just love people who talk but have no idea what they're talking about? Maybe you should look up some facts before posting such ignorant comments.
If you're strictly confining the violent and murder rate to city boundaries, sure, DC is more dangerous. But as a metro, the Capital region is safer and less violent than the Philly metro. The entire DC metro had around 327 total homicides in 2015 which isn't much more than the city of Philadelphia with 280. Considering 2015 was an unusual spike in murders for DC, it could've been a lot less while for Philly I wasn't even including Wilmington, Camden, and Chester, PA which brings it up to 450 in the area.
For 2017, DC as a city is on pace to have less murders per capita than Philly which just goes to show how crime can fluctuate year to year just like when DC had a lower murder rate than Philly in the earlier part of the decade and then flipped in 2015/2016. Add in city and county boundaries that can significantly alter the crime rate (especially smaller urban cities), it's not entirely wrong to say DC is safer than Philly, especially as a metro.
If you're strictly confining the violent and murder rate to city boundaries, sure, DC is more dangerous. But as a metro, the Capital region is safer and less violent than the Philly metro. The entire DC metro had around 327 total homicides in 2015 which isn't much more than the city of Philadelphia with 280. Considering 2015 was an unusual spike in murders for DC, it could've been a lot less while for Philly I wasn't even including Wilmington, Camden, and Chester, PA which brings it up to 450 in the area.
For 2017, DC as a city is on pace to have less murders per capita than Philly which just goes to show how crime can fluctuate year to year just like when DC had a lower murder rate than Philly in the earlier part of the decade and then flipped in 2015/2016. Add in city and county boundaries that can significantly alter the crime rate (especially smaller urban cities), it's not entirely wrong to say DC is safer than Philly, especially as a metro.
I agree with you. Just pointing out that saying a company isn't going to locate to city A because of crime rates, when city B's crime rates are similar, is a little ridiculous.
Philly and D.C. have similar crime rates, and both have some rough areas, but plenty of nice areas. People in Logan Circle, Downtown DC or Georgetown aren't dealing with a lot of crime, like people in Center City, University City or Chestnut Hill wouldn't either.
Also, Chester, Camden and Wilmington are all very small cities. Chester is 5 square miles. Camden is 9 square miles. Wilmington is 11 square miles.
Also, while Chester mostly sucks, Camden and Wilmington have some nice areas. Camden is gentrifying/revitalizing along the Waterfront/Cooper Grant, Downtown/Rutgers Campus, Lanning Square/Cooper Medical Campus, and Knight's Crossing/Campbell's Soup campus. Wilmington has a nice Downtown, a nice waterfront known as Justinson Landing, and Trolley Square is a hip neighborhood.
Also, what about all of the great, safe and cool small cities throughout the Philadelphia Metro? Ardmore, Bryn Mawr, Wayne, Phoenixville, Conshohocken, King of Prussia, West Chester, Jenkintown, Doylestown, Media, Newtown, Newark, Kennett Square, Haddonfield, Collingswood, etc etc.
I didn't know adding 41,000 people in 6 years was a decline.
Also, what? You knock Philadelphia for it's crime rate, then tout D.C. as a top choice, when it, ironically enough, has a higher crime rate than Philadelphia? You know crime rates are listed on City Data right? This very site you're using.
Crime Rates
Philadelphia Murder Rate: 17.9 per 100,000
Washington DC Murder Rate: 24.1 per 100,000
Philadlephia Crime Rate: 485.9 per 100,000
Washington DC Crime Rate: 591.5 per 100,000
Don't you just love people who talk but have no idea what they're talking about? Maybe you should look up some facts before posting such ignorant comments.
DC has lower crime rates than Philadelphia now. Every year, DC's crime rate declines substantially. Also, DC is on the verge of eclipsing 700,000 people this year so the rate will drop even farther over the next few years as the city marches toward 800,000 people in the 2020's.
Chicago seems like the best choice overall as already mentioned. Even if Chicago is not a particularly tech-focused city, its sheer size means that it'll have a greater labor pool and graduating tech talent in its metro than the smaller metros which are tech-focused such as Austin.
Amazon is looking for a new HQ in North America equal to that of their Seattle HQ. Where do you guys think they'll go? It'll cost roughly $5Bn and will have a HUGE economic impact wherever they choose to go.
I will say New York State..........lots of land......lots of highly-skilled people. If not, I would like it to be in New Jersey, or Connecticut........
DC has lower crime rates than Philadelphia now. Every year, DC's crime rate declines substantially. Also, DC is on the verge of eclipsing 700,000 people this year so the rate will drop even farther over the next few years as the city marches toward 800,000 people in the 2020's.
Sure, but not a large enough difference for it to make a difference for a company.
Current 2017 homicide rates:
PHL: 13.7 per 100,000
DC: 11.6 per 100,000
No company is saying, our employee has a 0.0137% chance of being murdered in Philadelphia, VS. a 0.0116% chance of being murdered in DC... LOL
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