Park describes a class of experts at companies like Bell Telephone investigating the future advances and opportunities. It struck me how much things seem to stay the same and how a company like Amazon has used their HQ2 campaign to glean information about cities across America, likely to improved their profitability in the future (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/amazon-hq2-long-island-city-virginia.html)

Zukin’s Loft Living, and Richard Florida’s work on creative classes,also foretold the situation New York City finds itself in now. I think we must remind ourselves, or at least ask ourselves, why Amazon wants to expand into New York City in the first place. The 25,000 workers Amazon has promised New York either already live here or want to live here. They are the loft living, creative class.

Park and Burgess’ pieces, in their assumption of city’s allegiance to concentric rings, now seems rather normative. It is a little too easy to be critical of their work in hindsight, especially with their pejorative language surrounding issues of race and gender. Now into the 21st century, as New York City and other cities continue down a post-Fordist path, it is interesting to see how something like Amazon HQ2 fits into a service economy. The tech workers a company like Amazon needs to attract seem to want to live in a vibrant sandbox of amenities and services. So now industry chases the worker back to the city and the tail begins to wag the dog.

-Adam Sachs