Amazon caused a national buzz after announcing its search for a city to build-out a second corporate headquarters (HQ2) to match its Seattle location. The compound is expected to bring 50,000 jobs to the winning city. Chicago threw its hat in the ring. Urban planners and sustainability experts see enormous consequences from what Karen Weigert, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s chief sustainability officer, calls “a city moving within a city.”
Weigert is also a nonresident senior fellow on global cities at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and heads its “Powering Global Cities” project. She writes the Amazon move will force mayors to consider issues on a scale they’ve never had to before. She will tell us why she believes Chicago is best-suited to host Amazon and why the decision could be a “game-changer” and revolutionize corporate social good.