Amazon.com Inc.’s pause of its plans to expand its second headquarters in Northern Virginia reflects some deep underlying trends — not just for metropolitan Washington, where I live, but for regional development more generally.
First, with the end of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy, many developments are being canceled or postponed. Long-term projects are less profitable than they used to be, and capital is harder to come by. As the major technology companies lose market value, their urban and suburban refurbishment plans become less of a priority.
Over the last 15 years, many U.S. cities — Austin, Miami, Nashville and Boise, to name a few — have become far more “business-friendly,” to use a term, and have in fact attracted many new businesses. This process may well be at an end. U.S. regions may be entering a new era in which they simply try to maintain what they have, or manage their decline.
