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Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

Yep or Detroit. Detroit has lots of real estate with no use. I say this as someone from NM and would love them to go there.

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The problem with Detroit is they would have to import nearly every worker. Plus you need to convince all of those workers to move to Detroit. There may be some overlap between former autoworker and whatever it is Amazon wants, but there's still going to be a gap.

There are a lot of places around Detroit for people to live if they weren't comfortable in Detroit. There are some extremely nice suburbs that you can commute to/from in 30-45 minutes which is still somehow an acceptable commute time compared to most other large cities in the US. You also have to consider that you can live in a 3k sq/ft house with a nice yard for 200-300k. That's very appealing as a tech worker looking to get out of SV or other "hot" tech areas.

As for importing workers, I think you'd be surprised how many tech companies are in the city already, I've seen a lot of people who suggest that Detroit is a top 10 city in the US in terms of work, one example is here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2017/03/16/technolog...

I think it’s a fallacy to say it’s hard to move people given today’s tech and capabilities. Also given the over crowding of current tech centers.

You also have to see it from Amazon’s stated goal. They said they want a viable second Headquarters. They want some place that could function if the other place went down. Detroit fits that.

Detroit has one of the largest concentrations of engineers in the country. Granted I'm sure a significant percentage of those are specialized in fields Amazon isn't interested in, to say they'd have to import nearly every worker is a bit extreme. Amazon even has a small office in the city already.

Who's to say there's not a secret AMZN Automobile in the works?

Do you mean the actual city of Detroit?

There is little to no way Amazon is going to be able to import their workforce to live in the city of Detroit. A whole lot of the housing options there are extremely outdated or require extreme renovation, the city’s infrastructure is in crumbles, and blight is still a problem.

Source: I have some friends that live in Detroit. Like, the actual city, not the Detroit Metro area.

Also, IIRC, a lot of the "cheap" property in Detroit has substantial back taxes any new owner has to pay on top of the hassle that comes with basically replacing a house from the foundation up.

That's a fixable problem - if Detroit wants Amazon, they can simply forgive/defer the taxes.

That’s the first thing they wipe out if they want amazon. In fact they should wipe it out right now regardless.

Housing is not the issue in Detroit. There's no major city with more room to grow housing / office space than Detroit.

The only thing that would hold us back is infrastructure. We have virtually no public transportation, and the influx of all the Amazonians would take traffic to hellish levels. But to me, I see that as a positive. We need a wakeup call to finally overhaul our public transport.

Source: I live in Detroit.

As sfbay demonstrates, merely creating very high need for good public transport does not come close to guaranteeing said public transport will be created.

I don’t think we disagree with each other.

Room to grow housing and office space requires a whole lot of development to happen. My greater point is that there is very little incentive for most people to move to Detroit compared to other locales that are further along on actually having a lot of the type of housing that is popular on the west coast, some semblance of working public transport and infrastructure, etc. The M-1 Rail is a good start, but I think we are still years from Detroit being a truly viable choice.

There are better options than Detroit for this largely just because Detroit is very far behind other cities that can offer some of these needs now and grow into the future ones. Detroit is still at the stage of needing to grow a bit more to support the influx.

I don't see any lack of incentive outside of poor infrastructure but hey, it doesn't seem to stop LA.

The M-1 rail is a joke. It goes from New Center to downtown, which is like a 4 mile stretch. It's the People Mover 2.0, public transportation lip service. It doesn't connect the burbs to the city, which is what we need. Not a personal shuttle for Quicken Loans employees living in midtown.

Our problem is that the northern suburbs get to vote on public transportation and they always vote against it. People who live in the burbs closer to Detroit (Ferndale, Royal Oak, Oak Park, Hazel Park, Roseville, etc) want to be able to ride something into the city so they don't have to deal with traffic and parking.

I can't say I care very much one way or another wether Amazon comes here, I just disagree with the sentiment that Detroit is unworthy of it.

Nevermind that rail in LA waits for cars, cause we can't delay cars more than 50 seconds, oh no!

Seems ridiculous to me, when a train approaches an intersection, you should have bollards come up and the train should always take priority. Moving hundreds of people is a higher priority than moving a few dozen, but yet the train is the lowest priority in LA intersections, and grey crossings aren't properly defended against idiot drivers crashing into trains.

Merely being difficult to do does not mean something should not be done. Having a root canal done is hell but it’s better than the alternative. The economy has been pushing resources where its easiest. That’s why Detroit lost its industry and ultimately at root of all the economic struggles in the US. It’s much more easy to advocate to locate somewhere difficult than any UBI implementation, as an aside.

Further, to my understanding of Detroit's current situation, the city/local government could grant Amazon entire zip code blocks of commercial/industrial real estate for its purposes. Repurposing and renovating/rebuilding already existing structures will always be cheaper than going from the ground up.

As one senator once said. “I don’t need you when it’s easy if I don’t have you when it’s hard”.

Detroit would be a tough sell to six-figure earners. Huge crime rate, terrible schools, dysfunctional bankrupt government, lack of local talent. Maybe an affluent suburban community outside Detroit, but those aren't going to be supportive of a huge new corporate HQ with all the traffic, construction, etc.

I come from neighborhoods that are close to Detroit standards... I would move there as long as properties don't come with tax liens (which I remember reading was an issue a couple of years ago)

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