Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 937

So I was wrong. Amazon didn’t pick Toronto for HQ2. It instead picked Crystal City, Virginia (Washington) and Long Island City, NY (New York City). More on that, here , in the NY Times. Confession: My prognostication was at least partially about trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In any event, it’s interesting to consider the locations that they did pick – as well as the fact that they ended up picking multiple cities. This was not part of their RFP. Though, many have convincingly argued that this process was over before it even began. HQ2 was always going to end up on the east coast, near one of Bezos’ homes.

Nevertheless, urbanists such as Aaron Renn took the announcement as a direct repudiation of the American heartland. He believed that Amazon would be far more cost conscious in their decision making and ultimately elect for a lower cost locale in the middle of the country. Instead, the coastal hegemony won out. 

Joe Cortright of City Observatory correctly predicted that Amazon would, for a few reasons, parlay their HQ2 search into multiple smaller locations (HQ2, HQ3, and so on). One of the reasons for this is that it gives the company more leverage when it comes negotiating subsidies on a go-forward basis. If NYC doesn’t want our next round of hires, we’ll take them to Washington.

Looking at the locations, one of the first things I noticed is that both are just outside of their respective “downtowns” (across a body of water), as well as adjacent or on the way to an international airport. Crystal City is across the street from DCA and Long Island City is a 15 minute drive from LGA. Both are situated on top of higher order transit. Makes sense to me.

Now, who wants HQ4?

CBRE recently published this report looking at the impact of the “high-tech software/services industry” on the North American office market. 

Here are a few highlights:

- Since 2010, tech has created ~1.1 million jobs in the US at an annual growth rate that is 3x the national average.

- Seattle currently has the fastest tech job growth in North America. This is the first time in 7 years that San Francisco hasn’t been at the top of their list.

- Silicon Valley, Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles all added more than 10,000 tech jobs from 2016 to 2017.

- The biggest “momentum markets”, relying on 2016 and 2017 data, are Montreal, St. Louis, and Seattle.

- Over the past two years (Q2-2016 to Q2-2018), Atlanta, Los Angeles, Orange County, Seattle, and Portland have all seen double-digit rent growth.

One figure that also stood out for me was this one here showing the relationship between US venture capital investment and the average asking rent for office space in San Francisco.

If you’d like to download the full report, click here . You’ll need to sign up for an account with CBRE, but it’s free to do that.

BREAKFAST , a design and engineering studio out of Brooklyn, recently unveiled something that they call Brixels. 

A Brixel is a variable-sized brick that is controlled by software and can act as a pixel in artwork, building facades, and other kinds of installations. 

Below is a video of their first installation, called Brixel Mirror . It is a 19 foot wide by 6 foot tall installation compromised of 540 Brixels. If you can’t see it below, click here .

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-5cVpWhp30&w=560&h=315]

While extremely cool, you may be wondering how applicable this might be to real world uses. But kinetic architecture isn’t a foreign concept and I am sure we’ll be seeing more of it.