re: Only a few cities could actually accommodate Amazon's second HQ

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North of Austin all the way.

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The State owns two large properties right in the middle of the city they have publicly stated they want to repurpose soon. The Austin State Hospital (the old lunatic asylum) and the Austin State Assisted Living Facility. They'd give Amazon either or both. Outside of Camp Mabry (the HQ of the Texas Guard), those are the most valuable tracts of land in the state not currently used for commercial, residential, or industrial purposes.

If I am Amazon it would be Dallas or Nashville or Boston.

Atlanta's airport is big and busy but it is sort of an hinderance IMHO because it is so busy. Atlanta needs another airport to catch up with Dallas, Houston and Northeastern major cities. There just is no way to get in and out of Jackson Hartsfield quickly. I would not want my employees spending hours and hours parking and getting through the airport and waiting for delayed flights. A thunderstorm over ATL means hours of delays for thousands of people--more so than any other airport simply because of the number of flights coming and going. A second airport in Cobb county would help tremendously.

The other thing that factors in these deals that many people overlook is the taxes on the management's salary. A guy making several hundred thousand dollars year can't help but think of what a location will cost him personally. A Texas or Tennessee location would save him tens of thousands of dollars a year in personal income tax.

Boston has high taxes but it would be a great place to recruit and has good infrastructure.

Nashville has no personal income taxes, a good airport that has all the major airlines--they would simply add international flights as demand increases. The airport is not so large that hours are spent navigating the terminal.

Dallas is a world class city. The addition of Amazon would hardly tax the resources already in place in the metroplex.

Doubt it would be Dallas. Austin, maybe, but Dallas probably not. Decision makers high up in Amazon care more about liberal politics than sound business. So long as the impact isn't that bad to the bottom line they would rather hitch their wagon to a "progressive" city. They'll find a way to make the math show them it's the right decision when in reality they're just jerking themselves off.

If Boston got it, I would literally move up there tomorrow.

Yeah it really sucks having mild summers and beautiful cool fall weather for football.

And it's honestly not that large of a city compared to the New Yorks of the world, plenty of burbs to move to if you don't like density.

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If Boston got it, I would literally move up there tomorrow

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Come on up, baw!

Here's my guesses of metros somewhat in order:

Dallas
Atlanta
DC
Nashville
Raleigh
Austin
Boston
Denver
Houston

I'm not sure how anyone else can compete.

I'm basing this on diversity of location compared to current HQ, proximity to current or potential new AWS regions, internet backbones, universities to feed from, current populations, and of course taxes, and likelihood that governments will give subsidies.

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I'm not sure how anyone else can compete.

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You're not sure how cities like Charlotte, Columbus, Cincinnati, Phoenix, Indianapolis, etc. couldn't compete?

I mean Raleigh may not even be the best option in its own state (Charlotte) so you need to think a little harder.

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Boston is too similar to Seattle

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Actually as far as eastern cities, Pittsburgh is probsboy most similar to how Seattle was before the tech industry caused explosive growth there.

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Actually I think Pittsburgh is most similar to Seattle

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Demographically and culturally? We're not talking about topography.

Amazon already has a zillion terabytes of cloud storage, processing, and bandwidth in "data center alley" in Ashburn VA (DC suburb) at the MAE east cloud exchange. Makes no sense for them to relocate there, they already are there.

Dallas and Atlanta both make sense.

Not taking anything away from Dallas, but Atlanta is the better hub for global fiber networks, real estate is cheaper, Google already has a few million square feet for a reason here, if I were a betting man it would be Atlanta.

Dallas is a close second.