18 ms·

“How Amazon Took Seattle's Soul”

217 points by OrwellianChild 9y ago

Danihan 9y ago
TL;DR: They used a horcrux.
- katastic 9y ago
  I know, right? With a headline like that, we're definitely getting an objective article!
  - enumjorge 9y ago
    It's an op-ed
ksenzee 9y ago
I'm a Seattle native, but I lived in other places between 1994 and 2009 before moving back (to the suburbs). The difference between Seattle today and the Seattle I knew growing up is stark. Not all bad, by any means. But wow is it different.
- mulmen 9y ago
  Was Seattle stable when you were growing up? I hear people talk about how much Seattle has changed but that seems like the norm.
- imesh 9y ago
  Isn't that true of everywhere?
- prgmatic 9y ago
  Same thing has happened to Venice, Santa Monica, SF, Bay Area, etc.. the world is constantly changing. The only constant is change.
- astura 9y ago
  I grew up in a no-name city I'm the Northeast and I can say exactly the same thing when I visit- Wow, this place is different! Because things just change. We didn't even have a big company come in or anything, it just changed over time one thing leading to another.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  If you talk to a native in their 80s, the Seattle they grew up in was very different from the Seattle of the 60s-70s, which was very different from the Seattle of the 80s-90s, which is very different from, you get the idea. Get one of those coffee table books of historic Seattle pictures, and you can see the overwhelming constant change.
noobermin 9y ago
Pretty weak op-ed. I was expecting good meat, but the only thing they listed that took Seattle's soul was housing prices. I mean that's one hell of an increase (median of 700K!) but all that build up and no elaboration... I closed the tab feeling quite underwhelmed.
- sockgrant 9y ago
  Yeah. I’ve heard amazon is really unpopular up there I’m surprised he couldn’t find more to say on the issues.
  - bm1362 9y ago
    As an employee, it was pretty apparent people didn't want you there. The Stranger would post inflammatory articles about tech bros and unflattering caricatures. My girlfriend and I moved up from Texas completely unaware of the stigma. She worked in bars and restaurants, where the staff would disparage customers suspected of being tech yuppies. I even remember being a guest at a BBQ once, I told someone I worked at Amazon (timidly) and the response was "Oh, you're one of those assholes." Coming from small town Texas and being lower income, it was a weird time for me. I was newly middle class and when I would go back home I felt weird about my income, but then being in Seattle I felt unwelcome.
    - techsupporter 9y ago
      > and the response was "Oh, you're one of those assholes." Frankly, and I mean this with all sincerity, fuck those people. They're what happens when empathy dies and envy takes its place. Ask any one of them if they'd have liked to immediately be vaulted into a six-figure salary with a stable company and a benefits package that would make a Congressperson blush and I bet you six shares of AMZN (that I've never own, full disclosure) that they'd take that deal in a hot minute. The bulk of the animosity about the "asshole tech-bros" seems like simple envy to me. To wit, lots of people are moaning about all of the wealthy people moving into the Central District and decrying that others are being "pushed out." Something like 72% of the CD was, four years ago, owner-occupied, so the people who are leaving (and, presumably, making bank on those properties they've owned for two decades) are doing so of their own free will and profiting from the sale. Yes, housing costs are a beating here but the bleating coming out of Wallingford and Magnolia and Roosevelt can just shut the hell up because the bulk of those voters ARE THE REASON that new housing doesn't get built at the rate it needs to be built. /end rant //sorry about that
jorblumesea 9y ago
Old Seattle was an interesting place, but also a much rougher place. The SLU was mostly warehouses, junkies and prostitutes. South Seattle was the real hood, not the semi-tamed version it is now. Wallingford was a hippy commune where someone might walk into your house and take a nap. Blaming Amazon is a total cop out. The death of "cool Seattle" started before Amazon was even a thought in Bezo's head. It's also funny that many of the people complaining about this issue were first wave gentrifiers pushing out people before them in an effort to get to the hot neighborhoods. It's frustrating how many Seattleites refuse to admit their own hand in this process. Never mind the fact that your Ad Agency's contract with Amazon allowed you to buy that house. Anyways, everyone in the region knows the "new Seattle" is Tacoma. So if you really want that "dive bar but might get stabbed" vibe you can move there?
- barsonme 9y ago
  > So if you really want that "dive bar but might get stabbed" vibe you can move there? As somebody who's lived there my whole life, :( I know we were just ranked the most violent city in Washington (or something) but tbh it's never _felt_ that way.
  - jschwartzi 9y ago
    How's Hilltop? I remember it being pretty dicey when I was young.
    - barsonme 9y ago
      Much better than it was. They had some big gang busts around 2009 if I remember correctly. No huge shootouts since '89 ;)
  - jorblumesea 9y ago
    It's a joke :) Tacoma is a pretty awesome place and I love it. Yeah it's violent but in general it's not too bad, just certain places (Hilltop) can get really bad. Compared to Seattle it's crime is much higher; the stats don't lie. But much of that is concentrated in specific parts.
peatmoss 9y ago
I feel like Amazon gets a lot of undue grief for changes in Seattle and for the housing unaffordability. As someone with a background in urban planning, I feel that Amazon did the RIGHT thing by doubling down on an urban campus. Another suburban campus like Microsoft or Apple’s new monstrosity would have been the wrong thing. Seattle as a whole could have/ should have done a better job planning for that growth and taking advantage of the opportunities it presents.
- automatoney 9y ago
  What are the major effects of an urban vs suburban campus? I would expect a suburban campus would make people more likely to move out there, so it would help with city housing prices, but I don't know anything about how urban planning works.
  - grogenaut 9y ago
    Out where? East of Redmond is MOUNTAINS. West of Seattle is WATER. So shove it way more north and south? And increase traffic 10 fold while waiting 30 years for the highways to catch up?
    - ghaff 9y ago
      It doesn’t affect traffic that hugely if people are fine with living out in the vicinity of the suburban and exurban campuses. Which for a number of decades including when Microsoft was being established, they were. There was a net outflux from many cities in the US. Most people wanted to live out to way out.
    - DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
      That mountains are still 20+ miles east of Redmond. There's still plenty of building opportunities if you look around Redmond Ridge, Duvall, Carnation, Fall City and Monroe.
      - grogenaut 9y ago
eagsalazar2 9y ago
This is all such self serving whining. I grew up in Seattle and lived there until just a couple years ago and yes it has changed dramatically but it is pretty unfair to characterize it as having lost its soul. There is also a very merciless bile people are constantly aiming at these new Amazon employees that that really pisses me off. They are just people, like everyone else, who got some education, took a job when they were 23-24 or whatever and moved wherever that job took them. Characterizing them as asshole tech-bros just because they aren't cool hipsters like you is just mean.
- nihonde 9y ago
  It's just standard provincial water cooler talk about how someone ruined the place because it changed. It's basically just code for "I've lived here a long time, so respect me for that". I grew up in Seattle, and I remember when they complained about California people migrating up, and then the horrible Microsoft Millionaires, and now it's Amazon. This kind of griping is what happens when very little interesting stuff is actually going on.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    Poor people envy rich people. That's not weird or wrong. Eseeciall when rich people bid up housing to insane prices instead of joining forces with the poor people against the landlords.
    - lackbeard 9y ago
      > joining forces with the poor people against the landlords The poor in Seattle are actually mostly allied with the landlords politically in maintaining the zoning status-quo. This is what has led to the increasing housing prices.
- kudokatz 9y ago
  > There is also a very merciless bile people are constantly aiming at these new Amazon employees Yep, and that part is sad. To me it feels like they're projecting the few arrogant new-hires' attitudes onto everybody. Also, as a female dating in Seattle, there's the all-to-real reality that one eventually picks up on the stereotype of the inflated-ego-Amazon-guy. This happens to the point of people refusing to date those that work at Amazon. I used to work there, and I feel the same about the stupid egos TBH. I just feel that I choose to apply that assessment selectively rather than across all Amazon employees.
icelancer 9y ago
I've lived here for 14 years and it's come a long way. I was here when Amazon was merely a place down in the International District before it terraformed SLU. You know what everyone bitched about then? Microsoft. And MS has done more to take over sections of the city than Amazon ever has, and ever will. Microsoft "killed" Seattle's soul by setting up shop in Redmond and Bellevue and causing urban flight. (Note: I don't particularly believe any of this stuff.) Now Amazon is the new target. Whatever. Fair enough, that always happens. But Seattle was "dying" just like every other West Coast tech city before the bigger players got there. What's not cool is railroading "techbros" who are merely 23 year old graduates making good money working a job they probably don't necessarily like very much, but living in a city that is still pretty damn awesome regarding quality of life. And regressive housing practices are driving prices up north of the Bay Area in some locations, all legacy policies that were long on the books before any of this expansion occurred.
- busted 9y ago
  > working a job they probably don't necessarily like very much Worse yet, trying to make tech people feel bad just for finding a job they actually like and going to a city where those jobs exist! If only we could all be so lucky. Like the job or not, I haven't seen very much indication that people are going into tech in droves just for the money (unlike what I assume you see in banking).
- edoceo 9y ago
  I remember living in QA and working at MS in late 90s, before/during the startup boom/bust. Some of the same vitriol directed at us, is now pointed at AMZN folks. Plus ça change i guess.
  - rconti 9y ago
    I am a Bellevue native, but have lived in the bay area for 15 years now. Californians are "ruining" Seattle in a way it would be inappropriate to say about foreigners. Fortunately the only thing "ruining" the bay area is "techies", not people from a specific geographical location. Oh, and the traffic has always been beyond abysmal, Seattle. You know it, and I know it.
api 9y ago
Meanwhile most cities in the interior have a deficit of good paying jobs and young people are leaving. A lot of those cities would give anything for Seattle's problems.
- xbzbanna 9y ago
  > A lot of those cities would give anything for Seattle's problems. They have made it clear they are willing to give a lot: https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1CO1IP https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/id...
- biocomputation 9y ago
  << A lot of those cities would give anything for Seattle's problems. This is such a terrible non-argument. If you go to a lot of those cities and ask people 'hey, do you want to be forced to move away from you home' or 'do you want to share the city with 50,000 new people in five years', or 'do you want your commute time to double', how do you think they would answer? Honestly, as a Seattle native, it's been a mixed bag, but mostly bad.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    It's definitely better to be unemployed and welfare in a rust belt city, hating on coastal elites who pay for the food you eat.
zw123456 9y ago
I grew up on a farm about 100 miles outside of Seattle that started as a homestead that my great grandmother and great grandfather from Germany started and my family still operates. I moved to Seattle in 1978 after graduating with MSEE. So I have seen a lot of changes over the years, but my family going back generations have seen even more. I recall fondly living on Queen Anne Hill (first hill north of downtown) which was my first place here in Seattle. I rode the trolley to work every day and would stop by and get coffee at a goofy place down in Pike Place Market called "Starbucks" and would tell people at work " hey you gotta try this Italian coffee, it's really good". But the "old Seattle", pre-Amazon and pre-Microsoft had a real grungy industrial patina to it (maybe that is where the music got influence?). Do I Love the old Seattle? Absolutely. Do I long for it? Not in the least. Every phase this great city has gone through has changed it, before Amazon, Microsoft, before that Boeing before that Weyerhaeuser. Each transformation, in my view, has brought in new people and new character and for me, I welcome it. I am going to post here a poem from a book of poems my Great Grandmother wrote for family back in Germany. It is about this area as it think it expresses my view of the changes, maybe I see it the way she did? The Sleeping Washington --------------------------------------------------- The forest, a sound is not quiet in. Washington sleeps and with nature. Small bird mutely and the bear rests hidden, Fleeting often only one deer hurries as frightened. Even the Pine Trees, deliberate,thoughtful and old, Bend the heads and nod soon. Slumber sweetly, only lock the eyes, Know not for a long your power rests. If light clouds in the sky draw And your persistent rushing wind shakes. Sleep only, State of Washington, as child. Sunday is today, in the solemn silence The forest is. The serious pines their treetops bends as to the prayer. But the environment of God's spirit and breath everywhere. So I want to bend myself in deep humility Before you,alone With fervency, for your benediction ask you, God the father. Retain also all my serene love Also ask I you, carry here a flowering Of colonies; With work, quite soon, railways, churches, schools, Culture drawn in The jungle country, a rich bit of earth in Washington. Therefore, I beg you, O Father, Thy blessing that it draws them not.
- adzm 9y ago
  This was a beautiful poem.
Silfen 9y ago
I have some "old Seattle" credentials. I grew up in Capitol Hill. I absolutely believe that Amazon is unfairly scapegoated, but at the same time do understand the gripes that many have about the city's changes. The most bitter are just the vocal minority, but there are many more natives who are uncomfortable to some degree. Given that I'm also a tech-yuppie-gentrifier, I think a lot of the toxicity is unfortunate and misdirected. While it's definitely a terrible idea to fossilize a city, some parts of town are entirely unrecognizable, even from what they looked like three years ago. I don't long for the SLU of old or the abandoned lots of the Denny triangle, but there was an entire "sense of place" that was wiped out almost overnight. The wrong people are blamed for it, but I can completely understand where the grievances originate. I'd place the blame most squarely on the NIMBY establishment and our single family zoning. There were bound to be growing pains from all this growth, but they didn't have to be so extreme. If we could upzone Magnolia and Wallingford, it would give the CD/south seattle renters quite a bit of relief. I also think that the HQ2 stuff has much more to do with hitting the limits of our transit and housing infrastructure than the leftward swing of city politics, but that's probably best left to another post.
- biocomputation 9y ago
  >> but there are many more natives who are uncomfortable to some degree. Seattle native who also grew up on Capitol Hill, and still lives here. As a home owner since the late 90s, the Amazon boom has dramatically increased my net worth. But that said, I'd much rather have the house be worth $300k if it would mean the last 7 years hadn't happened. It's really been too much, too fast. I didn't buy a house here to get rich, I bought here because my family and friends are here. The thing that really bugs me is the loss of community, and what exists where the sense of community used to be: crowding, the ever increasing spread of pockets of artificiality, pretentious restaurants, luxury cars swarming the hill, and outsiders absolutely as far as the eye can see. Furthermore, if you look at the responses in this in comments on Reddit, or in comments on articles, you can see the response we get for saying that that the wholesale destruction of our community makes us uncomfortable: "shut up you fucking ingrate", or my favorite, from people who actually believe that they are liberal, "yeah, it sucks that people can't afford it, but I got mine". We are talking about the wholesale, unchecked destruction of entire communities. Virtually all of my friends who don't own property are gone. We have neighbors from China who don't talk to anyone. Everyone is from someone else, and just here to consume or make it big or whatever. The property values are attracting people with real wealth and/or speculators, and if I wanted to live around Yuppie Gentrifiers, I would have moved to Madison Park. There is very little sense of community left. I feel like Amazon should have made its own town somewhere else, and left us ours.
chrismealy 9y ago
The real problem is when half your friends are priced out of the city and have to move away.
- lackbeard 9y ago
  Yes, but that's Seattle's fault, not Amazon's.
rizzom5000 9y ago
Here's a better article on the same topic: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/19/amazon-headquarters-seattle-215725 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/19/amazon-hea...
- dang 9y ago
  Normally we change the URL when a user suggests a better one, but in this case the lame article has provoked such a surprisingly excellent thread that I don't want to mess with it.
- jeromegv 9y ago
  Read it, and I agree.
mabbo 9y ago
> But median home prices have doubled in five years, to $700,000. This is not a good thing in a place where teachers and cops used to be able to afford a house with a water view. This is a self-inflicted wound that Amazon shouldn't be held to blame for. Seattle refuses to add density- a common pattern on the west coast it seems. When supply is limited and demand increases, prices rise. This is basic economics. If Seattle wants all those juicy tax dollars of Amazonians working there, they either have to allow for the growth in homes, or accept that homes will get more expensive.
- Pfhreak 9y ago
  Is it refusing to add density? I see twenty buildings going up from my window. Several districts were just zoned to allow taller buildings. It seems growth is outpacing the density that's being added -- not that no one wants density. (Yes, there's some nimbyism about, but the buildings are going up at an insane clip.)
  - ghaff 9y ago
    You hear the same complaint about Manhattan and presumably Brooklyn. Have they walked by Hudson Yards or seen the cranes all over other areas? Sure, you can always build incrementally more. But at some level it’s demand outstripping any reasonable near term increase in supply.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    Outside of a small downtown core, it is literally illegal to build over 6 stories, and small lots are limited to 3 stories because cars are prioritized over people.
    - c22 9y ago
      But these are replacing vast swaths of what used to be single family single or two story buildings with yards. I've lived in Seattle my whole life and I've seen it change a lot, but the rate of change has definitely skyrocketed. Everywhere I go I find myself walking through "only" 3-6 story urban ravines where 5 years ago I saw sky. It definitely changes the character of the place. And it's not like the downtown core isn't blowing up also.
aphexcx 9y ago
This article is garbage. No actual reasons or data, just vague subjective whining about his watercolor memories. NIMBYs like him are the real "ruiners" of SEA and SF.
solaarphunk 9y ago
Grew up in Seattle, lived on capitol hill, moved away a few years ago. All the "rough around the edges" components were what gave the city its character. There's a reason, growing up, why people made fun of Bellevue and how lifeless everything felt. Its also why they felt so passionate about their hometown, despite the weather. Now Seattle feels lifeless. I used to want to move back at some point, but now I don't feel like I'm missing out on much. Thank god Amazon has realized how much it has affected Seattle and is trying to move the next 50-100k employees to a city that could really stand to benefit from the growth. I don't blame Amazon entirely for this, but I do hope it serves as a lesson for other companies (and cities), who welcome growth at all other costs. The greatest irony is I live in the bay area now, which seems to predict the future of Seattle quite nicely. Its clear no one gives a shit about where they live, or the communities and culture they inevitably displace. They are just trying to make as much money as possible and get the hell out.
cperciva 9y ago
Amazon brought $700k home prices to Seattle? Wow, that's a problem I'd love to see in Vancouver! Seriously, housing prices didn't go up because of Amazon. Housing prices went up because there was an imbalance between the zoning for jobs and the zoning for homes. Vancouver doesn't have any employers anywhere near the scale of Amazon, but we've managed to create a much worse imbalance -- and median home prices well over $1M.
- s0rce 9y ago
  Exactly, same thing in the bay area - lots of office buildings and giant corporate campuses but the only housing is a few detached homes built in the 50s.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Eh, I thought that was more due to Chinese money? Seattle housing prices are driven by tech incomes, it is completely different from Vancouver.
  - cperciva 9y ago
    "Chinese money" has had a significant effect on the $5M+ market. And it adds a lot of liquidity to the condo market, by buying presale condos and then selling them when buildings near completion. But the amount of mid-market housing which is owned by offshore owners is too small to explain more than a small part of the housing bubble.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      It is the $1M+ market from what I heard, and it mostly ate up the mid market. Vancouver real estate crashed for a decade when the Japanese asset bubble popped (remember you could buy a condo for $100k in the late 90s?), this is just history repeating itself.
      - cperciva 9y ago
        If you count the number of transactions, then yes there's a lot in the mid-market range. But most of that is buying and selling presales; it doesn't affect the supply, because it's not eating up any housing units which actually exist. (In fact, there's a strong argument that this increases housing supply, since a strong presale market encourages more construction.) The real estate crash you're talking about had nothing to do with the Japanese economy; it coincided with the Hong Kong handover and an overnight 50% reduction in immigration. Keeping the supply of new homes fixed while the number of prospective new homeowners dropped dramatically had exactly the effect one would expect...
Tempest1981 9y ago
What could have been done better, to reap the benefits without the downsides? I hear complaining, but are there solutions? Maybe too much emphasis on jobs, to the point we're subsidizing companies like Amazon to build HQ2, with no money left to mitigate traffic or add housing? Does Sidewalk have any clever insights or ideas? https://www.wired.com/story/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-quayside/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-qua...
- jacalata 9y ago
  They could have voted for transit in the 70s. They could have not reduced allowable density across the city. And then when they realized people were moving in they could have increased density, a couple decades ago. And the increased density would make transit, even buses, more of an option, with both more riders and a larger tax base.
unionjack22 9y ago
Seattleite here, If the city would build for density and take some steps to address the speculation and foreign asset arbitrage going on in the housing market, then this debate would be moot and we'd be back to brooding and awkwardly avoiding human contact as we so desperately want to.
- banned1 9y ago
  Hi native, I was shopping for a new house in the Seattle area and randomly some people started talking to me (from the Southwest). This never happened to me before. I was kind of weirded out. I said, "so you guys MUST NOT BE FROM HERE." They are like, "no way. We are from the Mid West!" We invited each other to back yard barbecues within a month. Never happened with a native here.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Have you ever been to West Seattle? It's mostly natives and you get a much more open neighborly vibe. However, it isn't very techie and much more blue collar/other professional.
    - banned1 9y ago
      Thanks for the recommendation. Maybe what makes it more neighborly is the blue collar or non tech people in the mix. Maybe it’s us the techies who are the weirdos. But techies who are natives are “REALLY weird.” I guess they just like to keep to themselves and be anti-social? Fellow techies who are natives: what’s up with that?
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Depends on what you mean by native? Most of us are transplants, even those of us who went to high school and university in the area. All the natives I know aren't in tech.
- acidburnNSA 9y ago
  Is it not building for density? I've lived in the same spot near capitol hill for 5 years and there are new high-rise and mid-rise condo buildings in every single direction. It's been nuts! They built like crazy.
mc32 9y ago
That's ridiculous. Are we about to complain that (Bethlehem) Steel stole Pittsburgh's soul back in the steel days or Finance stole NYC's soul, or Entertainment stole LA's soul? Give me a break. A city's economy changes over time. Sometimes you get company towns and sometimes you get diversified economies, but cities evolve and develop around the economies/industries of the rather than industries settling on a population to thrive on. Even the Bay Area where you might say companies come for the talent --that's BS, the talent comes to the companies who are attracting it. If GOOG, FB, MSFT, etc. opened campuses in Mesa, AZ, you'd have people move over there following the cos and growing their econs.
- TulliusCicero 9y ago
  > Even the Bay Area where you might say companies come for the talent --that's BS, the talent comes to the companies who are attracting it. If GOOG, FB, MSFT, etc. opened campuses in Mesa, AZ, you'd have people move over there following the cos and growing their econs. If this is true, then why do these companies keep setting up shop in the most expensive cities in the country? If they can draw talent to wherever they want, why not someplace cheap like Mesa? (The answer is because while people do move to meet companies where they are, companies also try to go to where the highest concentrations of talent are or would like to live)
  - mc32 9y ago
    I think once a company settles in a place, they like to keep their talent together and glom people from different places --and it's only after they have distinct subsidiaries that they can geo-diversify (as GOOG slowly is, and IBM has done). I still think for the most part, it's people coming after the companies rather then companies coming for the people. At YC talent goes to YC, rather than YC going to the talent, for the most part) Occasionally, you get companies having satellite offices to accommodate some people (like Japanese auto opening design offices in the US and US companies opening offices in IL, to have access to some hard to get talent) --but I think that is a minority.
    - TulliusCicero 9y ago
sitkack 9y ago
Distasteful group think, change is the only constant. How predictably cliche. I moved to Seattle in 1995 from 90 miles away. Let me tell you about Seattle then vs Seattle now. 1. It had neighborhoods that were distinct and varied. 2. Street life was more vibrant 3. You could have a part time job and still live. Some of these things change because they changed for everyone, everywhere and not Seattle specific, but also not good. Now, Seattle is the same everywhere and more of the people moving here are moving for the job. Not for the place, or the people or the culture, if we can call it that. The job, they are interested in the career, in the money, in buying into a hot housing market, etc. Listening to tech people talk about their 2 and 3rd Seattle house (concurrent, not serial) sickens me. The poorly run record shops, lazy tea joints and bookstores with esoteric books are gone. Now it is Gucci and 200$ t-shirts. Seattle is LAME now man. Not only does it cost upwards of 3k to rent a house, everyone is burnt chasing pointers and promos. There is no slack, nothing that exists between the places. Tech people use a city, they don't make on.
- apsec112 9y ago
  "Not only does it cost upwards of 3k to rent a house" The majority of tech workers who recently moved to Seattle rent their homes. I can't imagine they're happy about high rents either. Certainly less happy than a third-generation homeowner who's made $300K by doing nothing but watch prices inflate. "Tech people use a city, they don't make on." Isn't that what natives have said about immigrants since the beginning of time? They're uncultured, they're greedy, they crowd out the natives, they're only here for money, they ruin the neighborhood, etc.
  - sitkack 9y ago
    You are putting words in my mouth. Not that they are untrue about tech fueled influx, or the displaced from SF. If you want to turn me into a paper bigot, go somewhere else. What Seattle would be well served with is the most draconian rent control that a region has ever seen. You own the place you live in, period. Owning a second home and renting it out should be legislated into oblivion.
    - 9y ago
econner 9y ago
Why is this title in quotes?
benjismith 9y ago
I don't think we can even comprehend what lies ahead of us for the future of urbanization. The cities, the suburbs, and the rural districts are all undergoing radical generational changes, and there's no hope things settling down anytime soon. If anything, the pace just keeps accelerating...
stretchwithme 9y ago
Every city is the result of all the previous destruction.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
There are a lot of problems that are not at all unique to Seattle or Amazon, and a lot of those overarching issues are going to color any sort of "then vs. now" comparisons. Over the last 40 years there has been zero net income growth for folks in the bottom half of the economy. Meanwhile housing has gotten expensive. Meanwhile the economy outside of cities has crashed and burned, while cities have revitalized and become the primary sources of economic growth. You can buy a house out in "flyover country" but there are no jobs there, and certainly no high paying ones. Cities are where unemployment is lowest, incomes are highest, and housing is the least affordable. And this is a great contrast compared to the situation mid-20th century where cities were being abandoned and getting run down. Cities have revitalized, and this has brought some salutary benefits, but not without costs. And the huge degree of income and wealth inequality makes revitalization of cities problematic in many ways. Growth doesn't translate to a "rising tide that lifts all boats", it translates to an economy that some people can participate in while others are increasingly pushed out of it. This is not only unsustainable, it's inhumane. There are many ways to tackle the problem but they are going to take years of concerted effort just to get started. For one incomes at the bottom need to be lifted up, and the easiest way to do that is increasing the minimum wage. A lot. It used to be the case that if you had a job, any job, you could at least keep your head above water: pay rent, pay your bills, indulge in a few minor luxuries, and build some savings. Now that's not true, not only for people at the very bottom, but for an increasingly large chunk of the entire workforce. We also need to address affordable housing, but addressing inequality is the more important fix.
- djibouti_john 9y ago
  Could you cite any resources so I could learn more about these points you brought up? Particularly I am interested in the trends you related to, and also the effect of a minimum wage. I would be interested in any economists who could also elucidate how capitalism tends to sort out these economic "bubbles" Thank you
digitalzombie 9y ago
Seattle went to hell after Boeing left it. It was either a ghost town of a city that depended on one company Boeing or now as it currently is.
geuis 9y ago
Please stop linking to articles with paywalls.
curun1r 9y ago
I had a number of family that lived in Seattle. They all worked for Boeing in some capacity. My grandmother moved out there and worked for Boeing in the early 60s after my mom turned 18. Her cousin was an administrative assistant, eventually to the CEO. Another cousin was an engineer with the company. To hear them tell it, Boeing was the soul of Seattle, though they were probably biased. But Boeing moved a lot of the company to Chicago for tax breaks and eventually setup another factory in South Carolina to avoid union labor. Despite being long-retired by that point, my relatives all felt betrayed by the company. And though those family members have all passed on by now, my guess is they wouldn't blame Amazon for taking Seattle's soul, they'd blame Boeing for abandoning it.
johnfocker 9y ago
Clickbait. The only valuable information I got from the article is that Seattle is gentrified by Amazon and its employees. The rest of it is someone sharing his nostalgia. I'm on HN for the science and mindblowing stuff and I'm tired of this kind of facebook post articles. I suppose I'm not the only one.
of 9y ago
Fuck amazon so hard. Wait... after they deliver my pumpkin carving kit.
chiefalchemist 9y ago
I think the question this raises is : Knowing this, what might it say about the city Anazon picks next? That is, for example, will it be "established" or more on the other of "we can impose our will on this area"? Time will tell.
jamisteven 9y ago
Errr what in the world did I just read. Seattle is not special in this way and it's certainly not amazons fault. Go to places like Utah, Nashville, Birmingham, same thing happening there dude just on a smaller scale as they are smalller cities
Manager 9y ago
I wouldn't fully blame Amazon but Seattle definitley has lost the culture or character it had when I growing up.
djibouti_john 9y ago
Here is a slightly different perspective from having grown up here and attending University here blah blah etc. The perception of the gentrification/growth is somewhat determined by socioeconomic class. I don't know if change like this is good or bad (many people would say it's neither). My seattle-born friends who don't earn much feel like it is to blame for their possible need to move, and difficulty enjoying their life when they have to increasingly worry about money. My friends who earn a good amount in non-tech (but can still live where they want) are sort of just dazed and awestruck by the whole transformation but mostly okay, if not a bit cynical about it. And people like my brother and me who have STEM degrees are just trying to keep our heads down, and benefit financially if and before things here boil over.
TaylorGood 9y ago
May have already been said, but what about Bellevue? It's the Microsoft equivalent. I lived on Mercer Island in the early 90's and only thing Bellevue had going for it was the mall. Was bland. Today it's a dynamic area. Better these cities are in demand than decay. In the words of Neil Young, "you're either dying or growing"
deleted 9y ago
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c3534l 9y ago
I don't feel like the author ever explained how Amazon changed Seattle and I'm not convinced Amazon did. Seattle changed over a few decades, like time has a tendency to do. Housing prices increased, as they did in San Francisco, Portland, and Vancouver. The author is (mostly vaguely) lamenting how things are different from how it used to be, but not offering much insight into why, how, and why I should care.
greedo 9y ago
People hate change, but that's the only constant in life. I grew up in SoCal, in what was a sleepy area that combined Del Mar, Solana Beach, Encinitas and Leucadia. Surf towns, with some nice beach houses, some excitement during race season when the surf met the turf. My mom bought a house with the help of her parents, $70K for a crappy 3 bedroom right next to I-5. Went to high school out in the boonies, near Rancho Santa Fe where the rich folk lived on acreages. I went to UCSD which was sleepy as well, though situated next to La Jolla where all the rich people who wanted to be close to the ocean lived. I went back to visit with my fiance in 1998, and I-5 is now like 18 lanes at one merge, my old house is now worth $1.5m, and the sleepy little village I grew up in is now full of people making over $200k/year, or retirees who held on to their houses and have huge nest eggs if they can ever sell. I had a buddy who was in the Navy, he bought a house in Encinitas, sold it when he retired, and moved to the Midwest. Bought a helluva house on an acreage, lives off his pension, and enjoys life without the stress of the West Coast. Everything changes, and people hate it. But people will hate it when things don't change as well...
shrimpx 9y ago
It's typical of Seattle culture to blame some incoming tech movement for ruining culture. What people seem to constantly miss is that before Amazon, this was a Microsoft/Cisco town. Long before that, it was a Boeing town. Seattle culture in the 20th/21st centuries has been massively influenced by technology culture. Anti-Amazon rants miss the larger picture. A similar phenomenon is in San Francisco, where people argue that SF is some kind of hippie paradise being ruined by tech, although in the larger context SF is defined by a long history of capitalist conquest, and the summer of love was a small blip on the timeline. The better mindset is to try to grasp your city from a larger perspective, and stop comparing how you found it vs. how it is now.

TL;DR: They used a horcrux.

katastic 9y ago
I know, right? With a headline like that, we're definitely getting an objective article!
- enumjorge 9y ago
  It's an op-ed

I'm a Seattle native, but I lived in other places between 1994 and 2009 before moving back (to the suburbs). The difference between Seattle today and the Seattle I knew growing up is stark. Not all bad, by any means. But wow is it different.

mulmen 9y ago
Was Seattle stable when you were growing up? I hear people talk about how much Seattle has changed but that seems like the norm.
imesh 9y ago
Isn't that true of everywhere?
prgmatic 9y ago
Same thing has happened to Venice, Santa Monica, SF, Bay Area, etc.. the world is constantly changing. The only constant is change.
astura 9y ago
I grew up in a no-name city I'm the Northeast and I can say exactly the same thing when I visit- Wow, this place is different! Because things just change. We didn't even have a big company come in or anything, it just changed over time one thing leading to another.
WalterBright 9y ago
If you talk to a native in their 80s, the Seattle they grew up in was very different from the Seattle of the 60s-70s, which was very different from the Seattle of the 80s-90s, which is very different from, you get the idea. Get one of those coffee table books of historic Seattle pictures, and you can see the overwhelming constant change.

noobermin 9y ago

Pretty weak op-ed. I was expecting good meat, but the only thing they listed that took Seattle's soul was housing prices. I mean that's one hell of an increase (median of 700K!) but all that build up and no elaboration... I closed the tab feeling quite underwhelmed.

sockgrant 9y ago
Yeah. I’ve heard amazon is really unpopular up there I’m surprised he couldn’t find more to say on the issues.
- bm1362 9y ago
  As an employee, it was pretty apparent people didn't want you there. The Stranger would post inflammatory articles about tech bros and unflattering caricatures. My girlfriend and I moved up from Texas completely unaware of the stigma. She worked in bars and restaurants, where the staff would disparage customers suspected of being tech yuppies. I even remember being a guest at a BBQ once, I told someone I worked at Amazon (timidly) and the response was "Oh, you're one of those assholes." Coming from small town Texas and being lower income, it was a weird time for me. I was newly middle class and when I would go back home I felt weird about my income, but then being in Seattle I felt unwelcome.
  - techsupporter 9y ago
    > and the response was "Oh, you're one of those assholes." Frankly, and I mean this with all sincerity, fuck those people. They're what happens when empathy dies and envy takes its place. Ask any one of them if they'd have liked to immediately be vaulted into a six-figure salary with a stable company and a benefits package that would make a Congressperson blush and I bet you six shares of AMZN (that I've never own, full disclosure) that they'd take that deal in a hot minute. The bulk of the animosity about the "asshole tech-bros" seems like simple envy to me. To wit, lots of people are moaning about all of the wealthy people moving into the Central District and decrying that others are being "pushed out." Something like 72% of the CD was, four years ago, owner-occupied, so the people who are leaving (and, presumably, making bank on those properties they've owned for two decades) are doing so of their own free will and profiting from the sale. Yes, housing costs are a beating here but the bleating coming out of Wallingford and Magnolia and Roosevelt can just shut the hell up because the bulk of those voters ARE THE REASON that new housing doesn't get built at the rate it needs to be built. /end rant //sorry about that

jorblumesea 9y ago

Old Seattle was an interesting place, but also a much rougher place. The SLU was mostly warehouses, junkies and prostitutes. South Seattle was the real hood, not the semi-tamed version it is now. Wallingford was a hippy commune where someone might walk into your house and take a nap. Blaming Amazon is a total cop out. The death of "cool Seattle" started before Amazon was even a thought in Bezo's head. It's also funny that many of the people complaining about this issue were first wave gentrifiers pushing out people before them in an effort to get to the hot neighborhoods. It's frustrating how many Seattleites refuse to admit their own hand in this process. Never mind the fact that your Ad Agency's contract with Amazon allowed you to buy that house. Anyways, everyone in the region knows the "new Seattle" is Tacoma. So if you really want that "dive bar but might get stabbed" vibe you can move there?

barsonme 9y ago
> So if you really want that "dive bar but might get stabbed" vibe you can move there? As somebody who's lived there my whole life, :( I know we were just ranked the most violent city in Washington (or something) but tbh it's never _felt_ that way.
- jschwartzi 9y ago
  How's Hilltop? I remember it being pretty dicey when I was young.
  - barsonme 9y ago
    Much better than it was. They had some big gang busts around 2009 if I remember correctly. No huge shootouts since '89 ;)
- jorblumesea 9y ago
  It's a joke :) Tacoma is a pretty awesome place and I love it. Yeah it's violent but in general it's not too bad, just certain places (Hilltop) can get really bad. Compared to Seattle it's crime is much higher; the stats don't lie. But much of that is concentrated in specific parts.

peatmoss 9y ago

I feel like Amazon gets a lot of undue grief for changes in Seattle and for the housing unaffordability. As someone with a background in urban planning, I feel that Amazon did the RIGHT thing by doubling down on an urban campus. Another suburban campus like Microsoft or Apple’s new monstrosity would have been the wrong thing. Seattle as a whole could have/ should have done a better job planning for that growth and taking advantage of the opportunities it presents.

automatoney 9y ago
What are the major effects of an urban vs suburban campus? I would expect a suburban campus would make people more likely to move out there, so it would help with city housing prices, but I don't know anything about how urban planning works.
- grogenaut 9y ago
  Out where? East of Redmond is MOUNTAINS. West of Seattle is WATER. So shove it way more north and south? And increase traffic 10 fold while waiting 30 years for the highways to catch up?
  - ghaff 9y ago
    It doesn’t affect traffic that hugely if people are fine with living out in the vicinity of the suburban and exurban campuses. Which for a number of decades including when Microsoft was being established, they were. There was a net outflux from many cities in the US. Most people wanted to live out to way out.
  - DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
    That mountains are still 20+ miles east of Redmond. There's still plenty of building opportunities if you look around Redmond Ridge, Duvall, Carnation, Fall City and Monroe.
    - grogenaut 9y ago

eagsalazar2 9y ago

This is all such self serving whining. I grew up in Seattle and lived there until just a couple years ago and yes it has changed dramatically but it is pretty unfair to characterize it as having lost its soul. There is also a very merciless bile people are constantly aiming at these new Amazon employees that that really pisses me off. They are just people, like everyone else, who got some education, took a job when they were 23-24 or whatever and moved wherever that job took them. Characterizing them as asshole tech-bros just because they aren't cool hipsters like you is just mean.

nihonde 9y ago
It's just standard provincial water cooler talk about how someone ruined the place because it changed. It's basically just code for "I've lived here a long time, so respect me for that". I grew up in Seattle, and I remember when they complained about California people migrating up, and then the horrible Microsoft Millionaires, and now it's Amazon. This kind of griping is what happens when very little interesting stuff is actually going on.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  Poor people envy rich people. That's not weird or wrong. Eseeciall when rich people bid up housing to insane prices instead of joining forces with the poor people against the landlords.
  - lackbeard 9y ago
    > joining forces with the poor people against the landlords The poor in Seattle are actually mostly allied with the landlords politically in maintaining the zoning status-quo. This is what has led to the increasing housing prices.
kudokatz 9y ago
> There is also a very merciless bile people are constantly aiming at these new Amazon employees Yep, and that part is sad. To me it feels like they're projecting the few arrogant new-hires' attitudes onto everybody. Also, as a female dating in Seattle, there's the all-to-real reality that one eventually picks up on the stereotype of the inflated-ego-Amazon-guy. This happens to the point of people refusing to date those that work at Amazon. I used to work there, and I feel the same about the stupid egos TBH. I just feel that I choose to apply that assessment selectively rather than across all Amazon employees.

icelancer 9y ago

I've lived here for 14 years and it's come a long way. I was here when Amazon was merely a place down in the International District before it terraformed SLU. You know what everyone bitched about then? Microsoft. And MS has done more to take over sections of the city than Amazon ever has, and ever will. Microsoft "killed" Seattle's soul by setting up shop in Redmond and Bellevue and causing urban flight. (Note: I don't particularly believe any of this stuff.) Now Amazon is the new target. Whatever. Fair enough, that always happens. But Seattle was "dying" just like every other West Coast tech city before the bigger players got there. What's not cool is railroading "techbros" who are merely 23 year old graduates making good money working a job they probably don't necessarily like very much, but living in a city that is still pretty damn awesome regarding quality of life. And regressive housing practices are driving prices up north of the Bay Area in some locations, all legacy policies that were long on the books before any of this expansion occurred.

busted 9y ago
> working a job they probably don't necessarily like very much Worse yet, trying to make tech people feel bad just for finding a job they actually like and going to a city where those jobs exist! If only we could all be so lucky. Like the job or not, I haven't seen very much indication that people are going into tech in droves just for the money (unlike what I assume you see in banking).
edoceo 9y ago
I remember living in QA and working at MS in late 90s, before/during the startup boom/bust. Some of the same vitriol directed at us, is now pointed at AMZN folks. Plus ça change i guess.
- rconti 9y ago
  I am a Bellevue native, but have lived in the bay area for 15 years now. Californians are "ruining" Seattle in a way it would be inappropriate to say about foreigners. Fortunately the only thing "ruining" the bay area is "techies", not people from a specific geographical location. Oh, and the traffic has always been beyond abysmal, Seattle. You know it, and I know it.

api 9y ago

Meanwhile most cities in the interior have a deficit of good paying jobs and young people are leaving. A lot of those cities would give anything for Seattle's problems.

xbzbanna 9y ago
> A lot of those cities would give anything for Seattle's problems. They have made it clear they are willing to give a lot: https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1CO1IP https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/id...
biocomputation 9y ago
<< A lot of those cities would give anything for Seattle's problems. This is such a terrible non-argument. If you go to a lot of those cities and ask people 'hey, do you want to be forced to move away from you home' or 'do you want to share the city with 50,000 new people in five years', or 'do you want your commute time to double', how do you think they would answer? Honestly, as a Seattle native, it's been a mixed bag, but mostly bad.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  It's definitely better to be unemployed and welfare in a rust belt city, hating on coastal elites who pay for the food you eat.

zw123456 9y ago

I grew up on a farm about 100 miles outside of Seattle that started as a homestead that my great grandmother and great grandfather from Germany started and my family still operates. I moved to Seattle in 1978 after graduating with MSEE. So I have seen a lot of changes over the years, but my family going back generations have seen even more. I recall fondly living on Queen Anne Hill (first hill north of downtown) which was my first place here in Seattle. I rode the trolley to work every day and would stop by and get coffee at a goofy place down in Pike Place Market called "Starbucks" and would tell people at work " hey you gotta try this Italian coffee, it's really good". But the "old Seattle", pre-Amazon and pre-Microsoft had a real grungy industrial patina to it (maybe that is where the music got influence?). Do I Love the old Seattle? Absolutely. Do I long for it? Not in the least. Every phase this great city has gone through has changed it, before Amazon, Microsoft, before that Boeing before that Weyerhaeuser. Each transformation, in my view, has brought in new people and new character and for me, I welcome it. I am going to post here a poem from a book of poems my Great Grandmother wrote for family back in Germany. It is about this area as it think it expresses my view of the changes, maybe I see it the way she did? The Sleeping Washington --------------------------------------------------- The forest, a sound is not quiet in. Washington sleeps and with nature. Small bird mutely and the bear rests hidden, Fleeting often only one deer hurries as frightened. Even the Pine Trees, deliberate,thoughtful and old, Bend the heads and nod soon. Slumber sweetly, only lock the eyes, Know not for a long your power rests. If light clouds in the sky draw And your persistent rushing wind shakes. Sleep only, State of Washington, as child. Sunday is today, in the solemn silence The forest is. The serious pines their treetops bends as to the prayer. But the environment of God's spirit and breath everywhere. So I want to bend myself in deep humility Before you,alone With fervency, for your benediction ask you, God the father. Retain also all my serene love Also ask I you, carry here a flowering Of colonies; With work, quite soon, railways, churches, schools, Culture drawn in The jungle country, a rich bit of earth in Washington. Therefore, I beg you, O Father, Thy blessing that it draws them not.

adzm 9y ago
This was a beautiful poem.

Silfen 9y ago

I have some "old Seattle" credentials. I grew up in Capitol Hill. I absolutely believe that Amazon is unfairly scapegoated, but at the same time do understand the gripes that many have about the city's changes. The most bitter are just the vocal minority, but there are many more natives who are uncomfortable to some degree. Given that I'm also a tech-yuppie-gentrifier, I think a lot of the toxicity is unfortunate and misdirected. While it's definitely a terrible idea to fossilize a city, some parts of town are entirely unrecognizable, even from what they looked like three years ago. I don't long for the SLU of old or the abandoned lots of the Denny triangle, but there was an entire "sense of place" that was wiped out almost overnight. The wrong people are blamed for it, but I can completely understand where the grievances originate. I'd place the blame most squarely on the NIMBY establishment and our single family zoning. There were bound to be growing pains from all this growth, but they didn't have to be so extreme. If we could upzone Magnolia and Wallingford, it would give the CD/south seattle renters quite a bit of relief. I also think that the HQ2 stuff has much more to do with hitting the limits of our transit and housing infrastructure than the leftward swing of city politics, but that's probably best left to another post.

biocomputation 9y ago
>> but there are many more natives who are uncomfortable to some degree. Seattle native who also grew up on Capitol Hill, and still lives here. As a home owner since the late 90s, the Amazon boom has dramatically increased my net worth. But that said, I'd much rather have the house be worth $300k if it would mean the last 7 years hadn't happened. It's really been too much, too fast. I didn't buy a house here to get rich, I bought here because my family and friends are here. The thing that really bugs me is the loss of community, and what exists where the sense of community used to be: crowding, the ever increasing spread of pockets of artificiality, pretentious restaurants, luxury cars swarming the hill, and outsiders absolutely as far as the eye can see. Furthermore, if you look at the responses in this in comments on Reddit, or in comments on articles, you can see the response we get for saying that that the wholesale destruction of our community makes us uncomfortable: "shut up you fucking ingrate", or my favorite, from people who actually believe that they are liberal, "yeah, it sucks that people can't afford it, but I got mine". We are talking about the wholesale, unchecked destruction of entire communities. Virtually all of my friends who don't own property are gone. We have neighbors from China who don't talk to anyone. Everyone is from someone else, and just here to consume or make it big or whatever. The property values are attracting people with real wealth and/or speculators, and if I wanted to live around Yuppie Gentrifiers, I would have moved to Madison Park. There is very little sense of community left. I feel like Amazon should have made its own town somewhere else, and left us ours.

chrismealy 9y ago

The real problem is when half your friends are priced out of the city and have to move away.

lackbeard 9y ago
Yes, but that's Seattle's fault, not Amazon's.

rizzom5000 9y ago

Here's a better article on the same topic: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/19/amazon-headquarters-seattle-215725 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/19/amazon-hea...

dang 9y ago
Normally we change the URL when a user suggests a better one, but in this case the lame article has provoked such a surprisingly excellent thread that I don't want to mess with it.
jeromegv 9y ago
Read it, and I agree.

mabbo 9y ago

> But median home prices have doubled in five years, to $700,000. This is not a good thing in a place where teachers and cops used to be able to afford a house with a water view. This is a self-inflicted wound that Amazon shouldn't be held to blame for. Seattle refuses to add density- a common pattern on the west coast it seems. When supply is limited and demand increases, prices rise. This is basic economics. If Seattle wants all those juicy tax dollars of Amazonians working there, they either have to allow for the growth in homes, or accept that homes will get more expensive.

Pfhreak 9y ago
Is it refusing to add density? I see twenty buildings going up from my window. Several districts were just zoned to allow taller buildings. It seems growth is outpacing the density that's being added -- not that no one wants density. (Yes, there's some nimbyism about, but the buildings are going up at an insane clip.)
- ghaff 9y ago
  You hear the same complaint about Manhattan and presumably Brooklyn. Have they walked by Hudson Yards or seen the cranes all over other areas? Sure, you can always build incrementally more. But at some level it’s demand outstripping any reasonable near term increase in supply.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  Outside of a small downtown core, it is literally illegal to build over 6 stories, and small lots are limited to 3 stories because cars are prioritized over people.
  - c22 9y ago
    But these are replacing vast swaths of what used to be single family single or two story buildings with yards. I've lived in Seattle my whole life and I've seen it change a lot, but the rate of change has definitely skyrocketed. Everywhere I go I find myself walking through "only" 3-6 story urban ravines where 5 years ago I saw sky. It definitely changes the character of the place. And it's not like the downtown core isn't blowing up also.

aphexcx 9y ago

This article is garbage. No actual reasons or data, just vague subjective whining about his watercolor memories. NIMBYs like him are the real "ruiners" of SEA and SF.

solaarphunk 9y ago

Grew up in Seattle, lived on capitol hill, moved away a few years ago. All the "rough around the edges" components were what gave the city its character. There's a reason, growing up, why people made fun of Bellevue and how lifeless everything felt. Its also why they felt so passionate about their hometown, despite the weather. Now Seattle feels lifeless. I used to want to move back at some point, but now I don't feel like I'm missing out on much. Thank god Amazon has realized how much it has affected Seattle and is trying to move the next 50-100k employees to a city that could really stand to benefit from the growth. I don't blame Amazon entirely for this, but I do hope it serves as a lesson for other companies (and cities), who welcome growth at all other costs. The greatest irony is I live in the bay area now, which seems to predict the future of Seattle quite nicely. Its clear no one gives a shit about where they live, or the communities and culture they inevitably displace. They are just trying to make as much money as possible and get the hell out.

cperciva 9y ago

Amazon brought $700k home prices to Seattle? Wow, that's a problem I'd love to see in Vancouver! Seriously, housing prices didn't go up because of Amazon. Housing prices went up because there was an imbalance between the zoning for jobs and the zoning for homes. Vancouver doesn't have any employers anywhere near the scale of Amazon, but we've managed to create a much worse imbalance -- and median home prices well over $1M.

s0rce 9y ago
Exactly, same thing in the bay area - lots of office buildings and giant corporate campuses but the only housing is a few detached homes built in the 50s.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Eh, I thought that was more due to Chinese money? Seattle housing prices are driven by tech incomes, it is completely different from Vancouver.
- cperciva 9y ago
  "Chinese money" has had a significant effect on the $5M+ market. And it adds a lot of liquidity to the condo market, by buying presale condos and then selling them when buildings near completion. But the amount of mid-market housing which is owned by offshore owners is too small to explain more than a small part of the housing bubble.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    It is the $1M+ market from what I heard, and it mostly ate up the mid market. Vancouver real estate crashed for a decade when the Japanese asset bubble popped (remember you could buy a condo for $100k in the late 90s?), this is just history repeating itself.
    - cperciva 9y ago
      If you count the number of transactions, then yes there's a lot in the mid-market range. But most of that is buying and selling presales; it doesn't affect the supply, because it's not eating up any housing units which actually exist. (In fact, there's a strong argument that this increases housing supply, since a strong presale market encourages more construction.) The real estate crash you're talking about had nothing to do with the Japanese economy; it coincided with the Hong Kong handover and an overnight 50% reduction in immigration. Keeping the supply of new homes fixed while the number of prospective new homeowners dropped dramatically had exactly the effect one would expect...

Tempest1981 9y ago

What could have been done better, to reap the benefits without the downsides? I hear complaining, but are there solutions? Maybe too much emphasis on jobs, to the point we're subsidizing companies like Amazon to build HQ2, with no money left to mitigate traffic or add housing? Does Sidewalk have any clever insights or ideas? https://www.wired.com/story/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-quayside/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-qua...

jacalata 9y ago
They could have voted for transit in the 70s. They could have not reduced allowable density across the city. And then when they realized people were moving in they could have increased density, a couple decades ago. And the increased density would make transit, even buses, more of an option, with both more riders and a larger tax base.

unionjack22 9y ago

Seattleite here, If the city would build for density and take some steps to address the speculation and foreign asset arbitrage going on in the housing market, then this debate would be moot and we'd be back to brooding and awkwardly avoiding human contact as we so desperately want to.

banned1 9y ago
Hi native, I was shopping for a new house in the Seattle area and randomly some people started talking to me (from the Southwest). This never happened to me before. I was kind of weirded out. I said, "so you guys MUST NOT BE FROM HERE." They are like, "no way. We are from the Mid West!" We invited each other to back yard barbecues within a month. Never happened with a native here.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Have you ever been to West Seattle? It's mostly natives and you get a much more open neighborly vibe. However, it isn't very techie and much more blue collar/other professional.
  - banned1 9y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation. Maybe what makes it more neighborly is the blue collar or non tech people in the mix. Maybe it’s us the techies who are the weirdos. But techies who are natives are “REALLY weird.” I guess they just like to keep to themselves and be anti-social? Fellow techies who are natives: what’s up with that?
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Depends on what you mean by native? Most of us are transplants, even those of us who went to high school and university in the area. All the natives I know aren't in tech.
acidburnNSA 9y ago
Is it not building for density? I've lived in the same spot near capitol hill for 5 years and there are new high-rise and mid-rise condo buildings in every single direction. It's been nuts! They built like crazy.

mc32 9y ago

That's ridiculous. Are we about to complain that (Bethlehem) Steel stole Pittsburgh's soul back in the steel days or Finance stole NYC's soul, or Entertainment stole LA's soul? Give me a break. A city's economy changes over time. Sometimes you get company towns and sometimes you get diversified economies, but cities evolve and develop around the economies/industries of the rather than industries settling on a population to thrive on. Even the Bay Area where you might say companies come for the talent --that's BS, the talent comes to the companies who are attracting it. If GOOG, FB, MSFT, etc. opened campuses in Mesa, AZ, you'd have people move over there following the cos and growing their econs.

TulliusCicero 9y ago
> Even the Bay Area where you might say companies come for the talent --that's BS, the talent comes to the companies who are attracting it. If GOOG, FB, MSFT, etc. opened campuses in Mesa, AZ, you'd have people move over there following the cos and growing their econs. If this is true, then why do these companies keep setting up shop in the most expensive cities in the country? If they can draw talent to wherever they want, why not someplace cheap like Mesa? (The answer is because while people do move to meet companies where they are, companies also try to go to where the highest concentrations of talent are or would like to live)
- mc32 9y ago
  I think once a company settles in a place, they like to keep their talent together and glom people from different places --and it's only after they have distinct subsidiaries that they can geo-diversify (as GOOG slowly is, and IBM has done). I still think for the most part, it's people coming after the companies rather then companies coming for the people. At YC talent goes to YC, rather than YC going to the talent, for the most part) Occasionally, you get companies having satellite offices to accommodate some people (like Japanese auto opening design offices in the US and US companies opening offices in IL, to have access to some hard to get talent) --but I think that is a minority.
  - TulliusCicero 9y ago

sitkack 9y ago

Distasteful group think, change is the only constant. How predictably cliche. I moved to Seattle in 1995 from 90 miles away. Let me tell you about Seattle then vs Seattle now. 1. It had neighborhoods that were distinct and varied. 2. Street life was more vibrant 3. You could have a part time job and still live. Some of these things change because they changed for everyone, everywhere and not Seattle specific, but also not good. Now, Seattle is the same everywhere and more of the people moving here are moving for the job. Not for the place, or the people or the culture, if we can call it that. The job, they are interested in the career, in the money, in buying into a hot housing market, etc. Listening to tech people talk about their 2 and 3rd Seattle house (concurrent, not serial) sickens me. The poorly run record shops, lazy tea joints and bookstores with esoteric books are gone. Now it is Gucci and 200$ t-shirts. Seattle is LAME now man. Not only does it cost upwards of 3k to rent a house, everyone is burnt chasing pointers and promos. There is no slack, nothing that exists between the places. Tech people use a city, they don't make on.

apsec112 9y ago
"Not only does it cost upwards of 3k to rent a house" The majority of tech workers who recently moved to Seattle rent their homes. I can't imagine they're happy about high rents either. Certainly less happy than a third-generation homeowner who's made $300K by doing nothing but watch prices inflate. "Tech people use a city, they don't make on." Isn't that what natives have said about immigrants since the beginning of time? They're uncultured, they're greedy, they crowd out the natives, they're only here for money, they ruin the neighborhood, etc.
- sitkack 9y ago
  You are putting words in my mouth. Not that they are untrue about tech fueled influx, or the displaced from SF. If you want to turn me into a paper bigot, go somewhere else. What Seattle would be well served with is the most draconian rent control that a region has ever seen. You own the place you live in, period. Owning a second home and renting it out should be legislated into oblivion.
  - 9y ago

econner 9y ago

Why is this title in quotes?

benjismith 9y ago

I don't think we can even comprehend what lies ahead of us for the future of urbanization. The cities, the suburbs, and the rural districts are all undergoing radical generational changes, and there's no hope things settling down anytime soon. If anything, the pace just keeps accelerating...

stretchwithme 9y ago

Every city is the result of all the previous destruction.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

There are a lot of problems that are not at all unique to Seattle or Amazon, and a lot of those overarching issues are going to color any sort of "then vs. now" comparisons. Over the last 40 years there has been zero net income growth for folks in the bottom half of the economy. Meanwhile housing has gotten expensive. Meanwhile the economy outside of cities has crashed and burned, while cities have revitalized and become the primary sources of economic growth. You can buy a house out in "flyover country" but there are no jobs there, and certainly no high paying ones. Cities are where unemployment is lowest, incomes are highest, and housing is the least affordable. And this is a great contrast compared to the situation mid-20th century where cities were being abandoned and getting run down. Cities have revitalized, and this has brought some salutary benefits, but not without costs. And the huge degree of income and wealth inequality makes revitalization of cities problematic in many ways. Growth doesn't translate to a "rising tide that lifts all boats", it translates to an economy that some people can participate in while others are increasingly pushed out of it. This is not only unsustainable, it's inhumane. There are many ways to tackle the problem but they are going to take years of concerted effort just to get started. For one incomes at the bottom need to be lifted up, and the easiest way to do that is increasing the minimum wage. A lot. It used to be the case that if you had a job, any job, you could at least keep your head above water: pay rent, pay your bills, indulge in a few minor luxuries, and build some savings. Now that's not true, not only for people at the very bottom, but for an increasingly large chunk of the entire workforce. We also need to address affordable housing, but addressing inequality is the more important fix.

djibouti_john 9y ago
Could you cite any resources so I could learn more about these points you brought up? Particularly I am interested in the trends you related to, and also the effect of a minimum wage. I would be interested in any economists who could also elucidate how capitalism tends to sort out these economic "bubbles" Thank you

digitalzombie 9y ago

Seattle went to hell after Boeing left it. It was either a ghost town of a city that depended on one company Boeing or now as it currently is.

geuis 9y ago

Please stop linking to articles with paywalls.

curun1r 9y ago

I had a number of family that lived in Seattle. They all worked for Boeing in some capacity. My grandmother moved out there and worked for Boeing in the early 60s after my mom turned 18. Her cousin was an administrative assistant, eventually to the CEO. Another cousin was an engineer with the company. To hear them tell it, Boeing was the soul of Seattle, though they were probably biased. But Boeing moved a lot of the company to Chicago for tax breaks and eventually setup another factory in South Carolina to avoid union labor. Despite being long-retired by that point, my relatives all felt betrayed by the company. And though those family members have all passed on by now, my guess is they wouldn't blame Amazon for taking Seattle's soul, they'd blame Boeing for abandoning it.

johnfocker 9y ago

Clickbait. The only valuable information I got from the article is that Seattle is gentrified by Amazon and its employees. The rest of it is someone sharing his nostalgia. I'm on HN for the science and mindblowing stuff and I'm tired of this kind of facebook post articles. I suppose I'm not the only one.

of 9y ago

Fuck amazon so hard. Wait... after they deliver my pumpkin carving kit.

chiefalchemist 9y ago

I think the question this raises is : Knowing this, what might it say about the city Anazon picks next? That is, for example, will it be "established" or more on the other of "we can impose our will on this area"? Time will tell.

jamisteven 9y ago

Errr what in the world did I just read. Seattle is not special in this way and it's certainly not amazons fault. Go to places like Utah, Nashville, Birmingham, same thing happening there dude just on a smaller scale as they are smalller cities

Manager 9y ago

I wouldn't fully blame Amazon but Seattle definitley has lost the culture or character it had when I growing up.

djibouti_john 9y ago

Here is a slightly different perspective from having grown up here and attending University here blah blah etc. The perception of the gentrification/growth is somewhat determined by socioeconomic class. I don't know if change like this is good or bad (many people would say it's neither). My seattle-born friends who don't earn much feel like it is to blame for their possible need to move, and difficulty enjoying their life when they have to increasingly worry about money. My friends who earn a good amount in non-tech (but can still live where they want) are sort of just dazed and awestruck by the whole transformation but mostly okay, if not a bit cynical about it. And people like my brother and me who have STEM degrees are just trying to keep our heads down, and benefit financially if and before things here boil over.

TaylorGood 9y ago

May have already been said, but what about Bellevue? It's the Microsoft equivalent. I lived on Mercer Island in the early 90's and only thing Bellevue had going for it was the mall. Was bland. Today it's a dynamic area. Better these cities are in demand than decay. In the words of Neil Young, "you're either dying or growing"

deleted 9y ago

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c3534l 9y ago

I don't feel like the author ever explained how Amazon changed Seattle and I'm not convinced Amazon did. Seattle changed over a few decades, like time has a tendency to do. Housing prices increased, as they did in San Francisco, Portland, and Vancouver. The author is (mostly vaguely) lamenting how things are different from how it used to be, but not offering much insight into why, how, and why I should care.

greedo 9y ago

People hate change, but that's the only constant in life. I grew up in SoCal, in what was a sleepy area that combined Del Mar, Solana Beach, Encinitas and Leucadia. Surf towns, with some nice beach houses, some excitement during race season when the surf met the turf. My mom bought a house with the help of her parents, $70K for a crappy 3 bedroom right next to I-5. Went to high school out in the boonies, near Rancho Santa Fe where the rich folk lived on acreages. I went to UCSD which was sleepy as well, though situated next to La Jolla where all the rich people who wanted to be close to the ocean lived. I went back to visit with my fiance in 1998, and I-5 is now like 18 lanes at one merge, my old house is now worth $1.5m, and the sleepy little village I grew up in is now full of people making over $200k/year, or retirees who held on to their houses and have huge nest eggs if they can ever sell. I had a buddy who was in the Navy, he bought a house in Encinitas, sold it when he retired, and moved to the Midwest. Bought a helluva house on an acreage, lives off his pension, and enjoys life without the stress of the West Coast. Everything changes, and people hate it. But people will hate it when things don't change as well...

shrimpx 9y ago

It's typical of Seattle culture to blame some incoming tech movement for ruining culture. What people seem to constantly miss is that before Amazon, this was a Microsoft/Cisco town. Long before that, it was a Boeing town. Seattle culture in the 20th/21st centuries has been massively influenced by technology culture. Anti-Amazon rants miss the larger picture. A similar phenomenon is in San Francisco, where people argue that SF is some kind of hippie paradise being ruined by tech, although in the larger context SF is defined by a long history of capitalist conquest, and the summer of love was a small blip on the timeline. The better mindset is to try to grasp your city from a larger perspective, and stop comparing how you found it vs. how it is now.