Oddsmakers and analysts are betting on Northern Virginia to take home the much-ballyhooed prize of Amazon HQ2. But Richard Florida, one of the world’s foremost urbanist scholars, thinks they may be backing the wrong horse.
Florida is Director of Cities at the University of Toronto and also works with New York University and Florida International University. He’s written two books and countless articles on urbanism in the modern era and serves as editor-at-large for CityLab. Florida has tracked Amazon’s search for a second headquarters city closely since the company announced its HQ2 plans in September 2017. Like many analysts, he too believes the Washington, D.C., metro area has the best chances for HQ2 — he just doesn’t think it will be Northern Virginia.
“I think D.C. is the front-runner,” Florida said in an interview with GeekWire. “I still don’t think it’s going to go to a suburb. I think it will go to a place like the Anacostia waterfront. It’ll go to a really interesting urban area served by transit.”
Read more at GeekWire.com.
