Government

CityLab Daily: The Hypocrisy of Amazon

Also: Should Cynthia Nixon apologize? And five breakthroughs that could make you love the bus.
The competition for HQ2 has given Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos plenty of reason to smile. Ted S. Warren/AP

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Much HQ2 about nothing: Amazon’s search for a second headquarters in a North American city has at times felt like a game of Fantasy Urbanism, as the company’s bidding process set up key metropolitan goals. But an analysis by CityLab’s Richard Florida and his colleagues finds that key criteria didn’t matter as much when it came time to make the cut from 238 cities to 20 finalists. Some of the cities on the final shortlist don’t fit core preferences, such as access to mass transit or having international airport service, while some of the rejected sites actually had better qualifications.