Deep Place vs. Deep Discount
What the Amazon HQ2 Frenzy Reveals About Our Cities—and Ourselves
In 2017, Amazon did something unprecedented. It issued a public Request for Proposals (RFP) for what it called its “second headquarters”—a $5 billion project that would allegedly bring 50,000 high-paying jobs to the winning city. Overnight, city halls across North America transformed into stages for one of the most surreal urban development spectacles in recent memory.
Governors, mayors, and economic development teams scrambled to stand out. Some offered billions in tax incentives. Others mailed symbolic gifts. Tucson sent a 21-foot cactus. Kansas City’s mayor wrote 1,000 five-star Amazon product reviews. Stonecrest, Georgia, offered to de-annex land and name it “Amazon.” This wasn’t planning—it was performance.
Yet beneath the theater was something more troubling: a shared desperation. A belief that salvation must come from without. That relevance, identity, and prosperity could be imported—if only Amazon would choose you.
Amazon wasn’t just a company. It was a mirror. Cities projected onto it their hunger to be seen, their fear of being left behind. This wasn’t just a search for a corporate headquarters. It was a search for significance.
Amazon as Symbol of Transactional Development
To understand what made this moment so revealing, we have to see Amazon as more than a company. It is the endgame of a decades-long shift in the American landscape: from corner stores to big-box retail to digital fulfillment. From place-based commerce to placeless convenience.
It is the logical extension of the development model that gutted local economies while promising lower prices, faster delivery, and endless choice. Just as Walmart helped to destroy main streets, Amazon digitized the damage—turning community economies into supply chains, and neighborhoods into logistics zones. The town square became a fulfillment center. The downtown storefront, a ghost.
And yet in the HQ2 process, cities across the country rushed to offer public land, infrastructure, and billions in incentives to this very force. In doing so, they willingly erased the very ground they hoped to elevate.
Through the lens of Deep Place, this is more than just economic shortsightedness. It’s spiritual disorientation. A loss of center. A forgetting of memory and meaning.
Indianapolis: Performing for a Stranger
Indianapolis was one of 238 cities and regions to submit a bid for HQ2. Its pitch emphasized connectivity, affordability, talent, and available land. State and local officials worked behind closed doors under NDAs to assemble a competitive package. Speculation suggested possible sites in or near downtown, along the riverfront or rail corridors—places with deep histories and contested futures.
It wasn’t an irrational bid. But it was a revealing one.
Rather than asking what Indianapolis needed to flourish from within, the city posed itself as a blank canvas for an outsider to design upon. The posture was not: Who are we, and what do we believe in? It was: What will impress you? What would make you choose us?
This is the same logic that replaces old buildings with parking lots, public squares with private plazas. It’s the logic of a city performing for someone else.
And the performance has costs.
Land offered for HQ2 was not empty. It had layers. Memory. Value not measured in market potential but in accumulated meaning. Neighborhoods offered as incentives had long histories of disinvestment and displacement. And now, they were being packaged for a company whose very business model undermined the kinds of local economies these places once supported.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/marion-county/2018/06/03/how-ambrose-property-group-got-position-land-amazons-hq-2/610864002/
The Inner Work We Avoid
Indianapolis didn’t “lose” HQ2. But it didn’t gain insight, either. The spectacle passed, and the city moved on—without the self-reflection the moment demanded.
No public reckoning. No civic pause. No question of whether the next bid is worth it.
And yet this is the work of Deep Place: the inward gaze. The acknowledgment of what already exists. The slow and difficult labor of tending to what’s been neglected—not just physically, but psychically.
Because it's easier to market a dream than to mend a neighborhood. Easier to chase a headline than to invest in what lasts. But convenience without community is not resilience. Growth without memory is not wholeness.
What Grows from Within
What if cities like Indianapolis stopped bidding for external validation and started building from within? What if, instead of courting companies that demand deep discounts, they invested in the slow growth of place—with all its layers, wounds, and wisdom?
What if old warehouses weren’t razed for spec offices, but reused for local enterprise? What if land wasn't offered to the highest bidder, but stewarded in trust for future generations? What if downtown wasn't just a district to market, but a mirror of the city's soul?
Because Deep Place cannot be won. It can only be remembered, felt, integrated. It is not created through tax breaks, but through care. It is not granted by outsiders, but grown by those who stay.
Indianapolis doesn’t need to become someone else’s idea of success.
It needs to become more fully itself.
The Stunt Failed
In the end, Amazon did not choose a single city—it split its headquarters between Arlington, Virginia, and New York City. But the New York deal quickly unraveled under public scrutiny. Local resistance to $3 billion in corporate subsidies and closed-door negotiations forced Amazon to walk away. It was a rare and powerful reminder: communities can still say no.
Arlington, now branded “National Landing,” became the sole HQ2 site. But even there, Amazon has paused major phases of construction. The promise of 25,000 jobs remains speculative. The spectacle has faded. The incentives were real. The return is uncertain.
And the rest of the cities? They were left with slick videos, empty promises, and the quiet ache of having performed for a stranger.
The PR stunt failed—not just because most cities “lost,” but because it revealed how much they were willing to give away to be chosen. It showed us what happens when we chase meaning from the outside, rather than tending to what already lives within.
In the language of Deep Place, HQ2 was never a plan for wholeness. It was a projection—one that distracted cities from their deeper work: the work of memory, integrity, and rooted regeneration.
The future will not be built by companies looking for tax breaks.
It will be built by communities willing to remember who they are.