
“How Amazon Took Seattle's Soul” - OrwellianChild
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/opinion/how-amazon-took-seattles-soul.html
======
jorblumesea
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
> 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.

~~~
sjak299
To put in perspective Ferndale, MI, an affordable but awesome neighborhood of
Detroit, is about 4x safer. 800 to 200 violent crime per 100k per year

~~~
smelterdemon
Ferndale is an inner ring suburb not a neighborhood

------
zw123456
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
This was a beautiful poem.

------
icelancer
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.

~~~
edoceo
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
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.

~~~
edoceo
Odd, I'm in Seattle from Oakland. Seems like outsiders are ruining everything
:p

~~~
rconti
I like to joke that nobody ever thanks me for moving to CA, the way they
viciously gnash their teeth about all of the horrible Californians moving
north (been whining that way at LEAST as long as I can remember, into the 80s,
but I've heard it predates that by many decades).

Funny, I know more people who have moved from the PNW to CA and particularly
the Bay Area than the opposite. Offhand I can only think of one person who
moved north who _wasn 't_ returning 'home' after college.

~~~
JBlue42
I like LA b/c no one gives a crap since everyone is from somewhere else and
the city just absorbs you.

My home state of N Carolina has a lot of people move down for more affordable
housing and decent jobs from up north. The city of Cary (near Raleigh) is
casually joked about as the Central Area for Relocated Yankees.

No one really cares outside of joking about their poor tastes in sports teams.

------
eagsalazar2
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
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
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
> 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.

------
peatmoss
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
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.

~~~
rsync
"What are the major effects of an urban vs suburban campus?"

An urban campus will promote urban housing which is dramatically more energy
efficient than single family homes.

Further, commuting from a condo building to an office tower (or whatever) is
very likely to not involve a car and to involve significantly more walking -
so you have positive environmental and public health externalities there.

... and then there are networking effects as the new condo building needs a
new neighborhood cafe which needs a new bus station and bulb-outs for bike
lanes ...

Fast forward 20 years and you have a new train line.

~~~
enraged_camel
I'm of the firm belief that suburbs are a blight in general. Wasteful,
inefficient, characterless... they are the real reason cities "lose their
soul". So I agree with you that Amazon did the right thing by choosing to go
with an urban campus.

------
Silfen
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
>> 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.

~~~
klipt
And wherever your friends move to, people like you will look down on then for
being "outsiders".

Many newcomers didn't choose to not have enough jobs in their home town. I'm
sure many would have preferred being able to stay with _their_ friends instead
of moving to Seattle for jobs.

You could try making friends with newcomers instead of walling yourself off
from them.

~~~
goldenkey
As someone who worked for Amazon in Seattle, the above poster is partly right.
Most of it has to do with Amazon's toxic culture and hiring practices. They
will hire anyone with a pulse, speaking English decently not required, having
a personality not required. So you end up having people who are just there to
make money and have little desire to connect with humanity.

------
cperciva
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.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
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
"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
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
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...

~~~
nodamage
> If you count the number of transactions, then yes there's a lot in the mid-
> market range.

Do you have a source for this? And is it specific to Seattle?

> 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.

I'm not sure this follows. If a Seattle resident would have been willing to
buy a presale (to ultimately live in), but it is instead bought by a foreign
investor, then the resident has a smaller pool of housing to choose from.

~~~
cperciva
_If a Seattle resident would have been willing to buy a presale (to ultimately
live in), but it is instead bought by a foreign investor, then the resident
has a smaller pool of housing to choose from._

Only if the foreign investor holds on to the condo in question. If they sell
the unit before construction is finished (which is the most common scenario),
there are just as many units of _housing_ available for local residents. The
only supply being reduced is the supply of pieces of paper which entitle
people to purchase units which don't exist yet.

------
mabbo
> 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.

~~~
biocomputation
<< Seattle refuses to add density- a common pattern on the west coast it
seems.

This is utterly and preposterously false.

There are huge apartment and condominium complexes going up all over town.
Ballard has been strip mined and turned into a virtual Las Vegas strip of
luxury apartments. Capitol Hill has been strip mined and turned into block
after block of luxury apartments.

I've visited the web sites of nearly all these buildings, and with the
exception of projects by Capitol Hill Housing Authority, it's virtually all
been built for people with high incomes.

The fact that so much housing has been built for solely for wealthy people is
really, really, really central to the argument against gentrification.

Gentrification says "Hey, if your community doesn't have have money, it
doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, we don't even have to erase it. You'll
just be gone and no one will care."

This is an incredibly destructive ( often totally racist ) message, and it's
really at the heart of the problems that arise with income inequality.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Look to the east coast or even Vancouver to see what a "huge" building is.

~~~
esmi
Speaking of changing cities with “huge” buildings; the before pic is 1990
which is just incredible, to me anyway.
[http://www.businessinsider.com/shanghai-growth-
gif-2014-11?r...](http://www.businessinsider.com/shanghai-growth-
gif-2014-11?r=UK&IR=T)

The tallest in the “now” image is this building.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Tower](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Tower)

------
noobermin
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
Yeah. I’ve heard amazon is really unpopular up there I’m surprised he couldn’t
find more to say on the issues.

~~~
bm1362
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
> 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

~~~
biocomputation
>> They're what happens when empathy dies and envy takes its place.

Well, forgive me for pointing this out, but what you wrote contains a fairly
shocking lack of empathy.

Feeling bad or angry about being driven out of a neighborhood by an enormous
wave of outsiders isn't about envy. The change hasn't even been incremental;
the bulk of the changes have taken place in the last five years!

In the central district, entire communities that existed for decades are being
destroyed. They are bulldozing people's communities to make room for people
with more money.

How can you expect people to not feel angry?

~~~
nate_meurer
No, I'll second the OP. Fuck anyone who chooses to hate you just because you
work for Amazon. Go ahead and be angry, absolutely, but anyone who treats
another person like that deserves to have their drink poured out on the floor.

~~~
lackbeard
Correct. It's wrong to be angry towards their fellow residents who just want a
place to live and work, like them. They should be angry at themselves and the
representatives they elected for the governance that has gotten the city into
its current mess.

------
mc32
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
> 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
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
> and it's only after they have distinct subsidiaries that they can geo-
> diversify (as GOOG slowly is, and IBM has done).

First off, Google has lots of offices all over the country and world, although
Mountain View is still by far the biggest one.

Secondly, what offices they have opened in the US are disproportionately (by
headcount) in expensive cities like NYC, Seattle, Boston, etc. The only cheap
city they have a significant number of devs in is Pittsburgh. So your theory
fails here again.

Heck even looking at Europe, you know what the two biggest dev offices are for
Google there? Zurich and London, two of the most expensive cities in Europe.
Where's their German dev office? Oh it's in Munich, the most expensive city in
the country.

------
unionjack22
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.

~~~
acidburnNSA
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.

~~~
apsec112
All the construction is concentrated into a few small pockets. So inside one
of those pockets, it feels like a lot. But the majority of Seattle's land is
still single-family detached residential only. This is a zoning map, you'll
see that the "highrise" and "midrise" pockets are very small:

[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55ff4befe4b029a3a1975...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55ff4befe4b029a3a1975b6c/55ff4c6de4b06ae6b94dff59/55ff4c73e4b06ae6b94e0166/1442794731781/)

------
ksenzee
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.

~~~
astura
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.

------
rizzom5000
Here's a better article on the same topic:
[http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/19/amazon-
hea...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/19/amazon-headquarters-
seattle-215725)

~~~
dang
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.

------
api
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.

~~~
biocomputation
<< 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.

------
Tempest1981
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-
qua...](https://www.wired.com/story/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-quayside/)

~~~
jacalata
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.

------
InclinedPlane
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.

------
solaarphunk
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.

------
benjismith
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...

------
jamisteven
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

------
greedo
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...

------
curun1r
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.

------
shrimpx
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.

------
c3534l
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.

------
TaylorGood
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"

------
digitalzombie
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.

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

~~~
lackbeard
Yes, but that's Seattle's fault, not Amazon's.

------
chiefalchemist
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.

------
econner
Why is this title in quotes?

------
stretchwithme
Every city is the result of all the previous destruction.

------
johnfocker
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.

------
sitkack
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.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _Listening to tech people talk about their 2 and 3rd Seattle house
> (concurrent, not serial) sickens me._

As a tech person in Seattle, could you please tell me where all these
fantastically megarich Seattle tech people are? I'd like them to take a look
at my resume.

~~~
jacalata
I know some of them. They moved here in the early 90s to work at Microsoft, or
they made a ton of money when their parents and grandparents all died and left
them a couple houses in places like Queen Anne and Ballard. I don't think they
have any good advice on how to replicate it.

~~~
smsm42
Your sample might be a bit skewed. I've been working in US high-tech for a
decade and most people haven't inherited couple of houses, own another one and
look for buying yet another one. Surely, there might be, but not typically.
Typically what I see people that either renting or finally could afford a new
house. Sure, some people get super-rich on huge IPOs etc. - but not the most
typical case.

~~~
jacalata
We're not talking about the whole group of tech people, we're specifically
talking about the ones who own several houses. I agree that it is laughably
atypical and the commenter who brought it up as a problem is overstating the
frequency.

