Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelB
Just worked in Atlanta a few weeks. I've been going there for years. It is a mirror of Austin in many ways. But it killed it's vibe about 10 years ago , where Austin is just really hitting the risk of it now. Austin , as a city is easier to comprehend. It has an identity and still has a sense of "place". Atlanta has a lot of really nice and/or cool pockets, but they are very disconnected and it feels very transient. I had dinner with multiple people who have only lived there a few years and have yet to connect.
Mind you ..... I would with lots of folks who have been there a while and love it.
I could live there....if I had to. There is indeed a lot of cultural outlets and decent film industry.
Does that matter to Amazon? They seem to say it does. Seems like the folks to have to travel to the new HQ to run it want to be happy where they travel too. Urban setting, transpiration...Seems like thats the employee they want as well. Hell, If I ran that big of a company and had that choice to make... I'd damn sure make it.!
TO me.. that is easier to make happen in Austin much closer to the urban corp... like google... like Whole Foods.... work where you want to live. ( It's why I don't think any of the suburban pitches being made here make any sense.... they are, no matter what, suburban recently created places.... all the vibe is corporate, whitewashed and antiseptic......sorry , just an observation... it's lovely if that's what you want )
I also heard a lot of folks in Atlanta lamenting the thought of them ( Amazon) going there, the same way I've heard it here. It was a frequent topic. "But our cost of living is already so high ( relatively) what will happen when that many more folks are thrust on us".
So... yea Atlanta.... It would be a good place for Amazon.... different from Austin ... maybe a little more predictable of a choice? It is also closer to the east coast. We'll see... they may just be looking for smaller and less predictable. A larger fish in a smaller pond.
We'll see indeed.
|
This is a pretty good synopsis of Atlanta. At one point, for about a year, I traveled there quite frequently. I never really got a great sense of the city. It is very disjointed. Lots of sprawl. It didn't feel very urban to me. A lot of it felt like a half ass attempt at being urban (like the Buckhead neighborhood). It felt very in between. It's not necessarily their fault. Most of it's growth happened when cars became king and the idea of walkability took a back seat.
In Austin, if you're in/near downtown, it's now possible to live here without a car. In Atlanta, there's no way you could live there without a car. That seems antithetical to what Amazon wants.
Downtown Atlanta is like other big cities that grew up in the car age. There's nothing going on at night. People file out of the city after the work day. I don't recall much in the way of ground floor retail and whatnot that would draw people in afterword. Etc...
They have a rail line now, it's nice that it goes to the airport, but overall it isn't that great. I wouldn't say that it has that much of a leg up on any other city in that respect.
It's not the point I was arguing beforehand. But that's another mark against Atlanta in my mind. I simply wouldn't enjoy living there.