Amazon Seeking 2nd Headquarters: Canadian Cities Pitch Interest

[lio45]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

that Markham HQ2 sign is really sad. The view behind it only reinforces said sadness.

At least that view drives home the point that there's plenty of room there for a massive HQ building - same can't be said of Downtown Seattle.

[megadude]

Lol. Love the positioning of his arm. Positive thinking!

[mistercorporate]

Ahh...the spirit of Rob Ford lives on...

[WhipperSnapper]

The sign is offensive in every possible way. Who picked orange and black? Also, the flagrant corporate ass kissing.

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

Depends on the definition of "good transit" though. If you're (you being the general you) the kind of person that only thinks rapid transit counts, then sure. But within the City of Vancouver, local bus routes are frequent enough to be relied on, yet they're still surrounded by single family homes, including the arterials.

Ya pretty much. I take the bus a lot and it is not good transit. Pass ups and bunching of buses makes it a far inferior method of transit and not really conducive to high density development.

Originally Posted by lio45

Yeah, it's crystal clear it's impossible to fit Belgium into any definition of lower whatever in the SW corner of the BC mainland. To get anywhere near Belgium in area, you have to include tons of mountaintops/uninhabited wilderness.

Here is the lower mainland as i measure it, pretty difficult to develop anything meaningful outside of the calculated boundaries as it's either extremely steep mountainous terrain or ocean.



So 2,750 square kms, assuming every square inch of famland is developed, which would obviously be a huge mistake, given the limited amount of arable land on the south coast.

[vid]

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

So 2,750 square kms, assuming every square inch of famland is developed, which would obviously be a huge mistake, given the limited amount of arable land on the south coast.

Honestly, why would it be a mistake, why does Vancouver need that arable land? How much of Vancouver's food is produced there?

I understand there are other, better, reasons to restrict sprawl, but the food related argument always seemed like a red herring.

[vid]

There's quite a bit of produce here that comes out of Richmond and Abbotsford. Those aren't wheat farms, they're growing a lot of fruits and produce that most places in Canada can't grow.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by vid

There's quite a bit of produce here that comes out of Richmond and Abbotsford. Those aren't wheat farms, they're growing a lot of fruits and produce that most places in Canada can't grow.

Yep, lots of cash crops.

Not to mention the social and dare I say cultural importance they provide.

Everything from people enjoying “pick your own strawberries” excursions (very popular with my friends), the annual feast of blueberries in the lower mainland, including many blueberry dessert specials at various local restaurants (there is just something more enjoyable about eating locally grown seasonal specials than just your average shipped variety) to sweet Chilliwack corn (so delicious), to the fact that the Vancouver region grows a significant portion of the world’s cranberry supplies (once read as high as 30%).

So yeah, the agriculture in the lower mainland is pretty important (haven’t even touched on the dairy industry).

And there is the simple fact that much of this farmland has among the longest growing season in Canada.

IMO only a fool would want to replace all that with single family sprawl.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Everything from people enjoying “pick your own strawberries” excursions (very popular with my friends), the annual feast of blueberries in the lower mainland, including many blueberry dessert specials at various local restaurants (there is just something more enjoyable about eating locally grown seasonal specials than just your average shipped variety) to sweet Chilliwack corn (so delicious), to the fact that the Vancouver region grows a significant portion of the world’s cranberry supplies (once read as high as 30%).

"World's cranberry supplies" reminds me of "world's maple syrup production". Most people in the world have likely never heard of cranberries.

We had a weird blueberry glut and price crash recently. Here's an article about land speculators and the blueberry market: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...land-1.3707048

As far as I can tell the blueberries here are the same ones grown on the East Coast. Cranberries meanwhile are native to the East Coast of North America. Production shifted away from places like Massachusetts to cheaper areas (Massachusetts has voluntary agricultural land preservation; this could make farming there more expensive while it's artificially cheap in the Lower Mainland).

The best argument I can think of against developing the ALR is that transportation in the Lower Mainland is already miserable and it's unlikely that developing this farmland with new poorly-connected sprawl would do anything other than drive more speculation and increase congestion. Most of it's marginal as far as commuting to the city goes, and that commute would get worse if there were more development. It would be better to move away from detached housing, fix the real estate and development market in the Vancouver area, and build adequate infrastructure.

[libtard]

Originally Posted by vid

Kind of misleading picture. Those spheres have been complete for a while now

[vid]

It is an old picture, but the article is from last week:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/t...pment-tax.html

SEATTLE — Amazon abruptly escalated a fight with its hometown on Wednesday, halting major expansion plans in Seattle because of a tax being considered by the City Council.

The new tax would charge large employers in the city about $500 per employee, with the money going to help alleviate a housing crisis. The tax is squarely aimed at Amazon, which is Seattle’s largest employer and frequently blamed by many residents for the city’s soaring housing costs.

The company said it would halt construction of a new building it was planning to erect downtown and reconsider occupying another that is already under construction, putting 7,000 or more jobs in jeopardy.

This is how capitalism fucks with democracy. Is Toronto ready for this?

[GeneralLeeTPHLS]

Those spherical forms in Seattle are fugly (I don't find the design attractive by any means)......I wonder when, if ever, they'll be castrated in favour of another use for that land.

I'm surprised Amazon is so influential in Seattle, but it makes more sense seeing as how Amazon isn't a small fish in a tank of water. Do we know when Amazon will announce which city they "chose"?

[Architype]

Originally Posted by vid

It is an old picture, but the article is from last week:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/t...pment-tax.html



This is how capitalism fucks with democracy. Is Toronto ready for this?

This is also how nations fail and empires crumble.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

Here is the lower mainland as i measure it, pretty difficult to develop anything meaningful outside of the calculated boundaries as it's either extremely steep mountainous terrain or ocean.



So 2,750 square kms, assuming every square inch of famland is developed, which would obviously be a huge mistake, given the limited amount of arable land on the south coast.

Yeah, as Architype said, that's Luxembourg, not Belgium.

[vid]

Originally Posted by Architype

This is also how nations fail and empires crumble.

Or maybe:

Mass job losses caused by advancing technology could lead to a rise of Marxism, the governor of the Bank of England has warned.

Mark Carney said the automation of millions of jobs could lead to mass unemployment, wage stagnation and the growth of communism within a generation.

He warned “Marx and Engels may again become relevant.”

Speaking at the Canada Growth Summit, Mr Carney said increases in artificial intelligence, big data and high-tech machines could create huge inequalities between the high-skilled workers who benefit from the advances and those who are sidelined by them.

He said: “The benefits, from a worker’s perspective, from the first industrial revolution, which began in the latter half of the 18th century, were not felt fully in productivity and wages until the latter half of the 19th century.

“If you substitute platforms for textile mills, machine learning for steam engines, Twitter for the telegraph, you have exactly the same dynamics as existed 150 years ago – when Karl Marx was scribbling the Communist Manifesto.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a8304706.html

[someone123]

“If you substitute platforms for textile mills, machine learning for steam engines, Twitter for the telegraph, you have exactly the same dynamics as existed 150 years ago – when Karl Marx was scribbling the Communist Manifesto.”

I am sympathetic to his overall point but these are bad examples that don't hold up to scrutiny and I hate the narrative about voodoo technologies leading to potential science fiction social problems in the future.

Steam engines in Marx' day were expensive forms of privately-owned capital. Machine learning is a field or process or set of algorithms that anybody can participate in or implement assuming a baseline level of aptitude and education. Twitter is a niche service and a business that has a hard time making money.

As for the voodoo and Big Data creating inequalities in the future, the reality is much more mundane and much worse. The inequality is already here. It was caused by human systems; machine learning algorithms may contribute but were not a necessary factor.

I agree that there will be social instability unless things improve. I kind of hoped that 2008 was going to be like 1963 but instead we got another decade dominated by institutional stagnation.

[libtard]

Originally Posted by GeneralLeeTPHLS

Those spherical forms in Seattle are fugly (I don't find the design attractive by any means)......I wonder when, if ever, they'll be castrated in favour of another use for that land.

I'm surprised Amazon is so influential in Seattle, but it makes more sense seeing as how Amazon isn't a small fish in a tank of water. Do we know when Amazon will announce which city they "chose"?

Why on earth would they bulldoze the spheres? They spent hundreds of millions to build them, they contain over 40,000 plants. It's quite the jewel for any city to have in their downtown core

[SpongeG]

Amazon to open massive distribution centre in Ottawa

The world’s largest retailer is building a massive new facility in Ottawa's east end, CTV News has learned.

Sources tell CTV News that Amazon will open a massive distribution centre at Boundary Road and Hwy. 417.

The facility will be a whopping one million square feet—the largest industrial building ever built in the city. It will sit on a 96-acre property and include 1,000 parking spaces and 99 truck loading bays.

In a statement, Amazon did not confirm its plans.

“Amazon is constantly investigating new locations to support the growth and increase the flexibility of its North American network to address customers’ needs,” spokeswoman Shevaun Brown said in an email.

“Amazon is not yet commenting on any specific plans in Ottawa.”

The developer, Broccolini Construction, also would not confirm the tenant, only saying the project is very large.

“For a building of this size, we would like to have a good feeling that the building will be filled come construction completion, so we definitely have a user in mind,” Broccolini Construction's development manager James Beach said.

Several sources tell CTV News that user is Amazon, the world’s largest retailer that recently eclipsed a $700-billion valuation.

...

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/amazon-to-...tawa-1.3944121

[1overcosc]

A lot of us over in the Ottawa forum are a little dumbstruck by how big that facility is.. bigger even than the GTA distribution centre. We've concluded it's likely going to be supplying Quebec and possibly Atlantic Canada as well as the Ottawa region.