Here at The Post, we've already performed our own analysis to see which metropolitan areas might match Amazon's criteria the best. Now, we're having them face off in a hypothetical March Madness-style competition.
The result is the bracket you see below. We invite you to fill out this sheet just as you would for an ordinary college basketball tourney, then on Friday, join us and a few urban planning experts at 11:15 a.m. Eastern time for a Facebook Live event where we'll have a lively debate over our respective brackets. Bonus points if you can convince our panel that Mexico City is going all the way to the finish.
To seed the bracket, we've winnowed our initial list of nearly 40 metro areas down to 32, largely based on geographic criteria. We assume, for example, that Amazon will likely avoid areas on the West Coast or in the Pacific time zone. For one thing, locating a new headquarters in a different time zone than its original HQ could give employees greater flexibility in their work schedules, and allow the company to work a wider range of U.S. hours. Meanwhile, given the number of urban candidates in traditionally red states, setting up outside the West Coast could give Amazon additional political clout in these areas — a nice side benefit for a company whose main HQ is in a largely blue state.
You can fill out the bracket by printing out this page, or by clicking here, which will take you to a fillable PDF that you can complete in your browser or on your computer.
Once you're done, you can print it as a hardcopy (or print it as a new PDF) to keep for later. (Note: Some browsers may not support the in-browser filling function. If you fill out the form in your browser and want to save it digitally, you'll need to print-to-PDF, as simply downloading the PDF may not preserve your changes.)
Amazon isn't expected to make a final decision on where to place its second headquarters until sometime next year.