{"id":831,"date":"2017-10-19T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeaftercarbon.net\/?p=831"},"modified":"2017-10-17T07:37:24","modified_gmt":"2017-10-17T11:37:24","slug":"amazon-seeks-right-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/2017\/10\/amazon-seeks-right-city\/","title":{"rendered":"If Amazon Were A City&#8230; You&#8217;d Want to Live There"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: symbol;\">When Americans move from one city to another, they\u2019re usually looking for economic opportunity or warmer, steadier weather. When corporations look for a new location, they\u2019ve got much longer wish lists\u2014and cities compete to give them what they want.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: symbol;\">For the many cities entering the contest over location of Amazon second headquarters (HQ2), with its potential of 50,000 high-paying jobs and $5 billion in construction investment, the company\u2019s selection criteria signal \u201cattributes cities must have if they aspire to be a serious part of America\u2019s growing digital economy,\u201d write Amy Liu and Mark Muro in <em>Harvard Business Review<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: symbol;\">But there&#8217;s a more important reason to pursue Amazon&#8217;s favor: the company knows what the future of cities looks like and is making it happen. It is a force for urban transformation&#8211;but not the sort that is only about economic development.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: symbol;\">If the company&#8217;s 380,000 employees and $136 billion in annual sales were all in one place, they would form one of America&#8217;s biggest cities by population and economic output. (As many workers as Pittsburgh has people; as much sales revenue as metropolitan Pittsburgh&#8217;s total economic activity.) And it would be at the leading edge of an urban evolution that only a few cities in the U.S. and the world are undertaking intentionally, aggressively, and comprehensively. Amazon aims to be carbon-free, zero waste, energy efficient, and green&#8211;and is adopting and developing innovations to reach those goals. The details are on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/p\/feature\/wnsdvqqghme982o\">Amazon&#8217;s website sustainability page<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: symbol;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Renewable Energy.<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>Amazon\u00a0has committed to operate on 100 percent renewable energy&#8211;a goal that a small fraction of U.S. cities share. It is developing renewable energy projects that will produce enough power to run 240,000 U.S. homes annually, the size of Portland, Oregon. Last year, Amazon was the leading corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the United States according to the 2017 State of Green Business report.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: symbol;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>District Heating.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Amazon&#8217;s newest buildings in the Denny Triangle area of Seattle are heated by recycling energy from a nearby data center. This &#8220;district energy&#8221; system works by capturing heat generated at a non-Amazon data center in the neighboring Westin Building and recycling that heat through underground water pipes instead of venting it into the atmosphere. The district energy system came about from a collaboration with the City of Seattle. Through it, Amazon will be able to heat three million square feet of office space.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: symbol;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Waste Reduction. <\/strong><\/span>Amazon is moving toward\u00a0100% recyclable packaging and to shipping products in their own packages without additional shipping boxes. Amazon supports the responsible disposal and recycling of electronics products. To encourage its customers to recycle their Amazon devices, it offers free shipping for this purpose and covers the costs associated with Amazon device recycling, which is performed by licensed recycling facilities. Customers can drop off Amazon Basics rechargeable batteries at almost 30,000 collection sites throughout the U.S. and Canada.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: symbol;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Energy Efficiency.<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>Amazon&#8217;s buildings in Seattle are sustainable and energy-efficient. Their interiors feature salvaged and locally sourced woods, energy-efficient lighting and composting and recycling alternatives, as well as public plazas and pockets of open green space outside of the buildings. Twenty of the buildings in Amazon&#8217;s Seattle campus were built using LEED standards.\u00a0The green roofs on its Doppler building and adjacent Meeting Center reduce building heating and cooling loads, clean and reduce storm water runoff by at least 70%, moderate the urban heat island effect\u00a0and improve local air quality.\u00a0Many of Amazon&#8217;s fulfillment centers around the world also have sustainable and eco-friendly interiors and exteriors. Amazon.de&#8217;s corporate offices in Munich, Germany, have been gold-certified as environmentally friendly by the German Sustainable Building Council, based on their energy-efficient interiors and use of sustainable building materials. Amazon&#8217;s fulfillment center in Beijing, China, maximizes the use of natural lighting, saving thousands of kilowatt-hours of power usage each month. The company is experimenting with solar and fuel cell installations in fulfillment centers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: symbol;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Electric Vehicles.<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>Amazon joined the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s Workplace Charging Challenge, a public-private partnership to support the development of the national plug- in electric vehicle (PEV) infrastructure. It offers PEV charging stations for employees in Seattle.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: symbol;\">If Amazon were a city &#8230; it would be a place that lots of people would want to live in.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<span class=\"et_bloom_bottom_trigger\"><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Americans move from one city to another, they\u2019re usually looking for economic opportunity or warmer, steadier weather. When corporations look for a new location, they\u2019ve got much longer wish lists\u2014and cities compete to give them what they want. For the many cities entering the contest over location of Amazon second headquarters (HQ2), with its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cities","category-urban-transformation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":922,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions\/922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}