https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/11/20/18103065/amazon-hq2-finalists-long-island-city-crystal-city

The year of speculation around Amazon’s HQ2 landing pad felt like nothing so much as a prolonged anxiety attack. Attracting corporations has generally been viewed as economic development, but Amazon, now valued at $1 trillion, feels bigger than Bell Labs, Under Armour, Twitter, or any given sports stadium.

As of last week, Amazon has picked two new homes, each of which offered incentives and subsidies. Northern Virginia and New York City offered workforce cash grants of $22,000 per job and $48,000 per new job, respectively. New York is kicking in nearly three times what Virginia offered. Both probably overpaid, given that they are already rich in the “access to tech talent” that Amazon stressed as paramount for its next location. And the loosely connected environs of Crystal City, Pentagon City, and Potomac Yards have been renamed, per northern Virginia’s response to Amazon’s request for proposals, as the agglomerated “National Landing.”