Seattle as the 'Next Detroit'

Jim Russell makes a sure-to-be-controversial argument: that Seattle is the next Detroit. Russell isn't making a prediction about Seattle's eventual decline—rather he's comparing the influence of Jeff Bezos in Seattle to the influence of Henry Ford in Detroit.

After pondering the question of the "next Detroit and Ford," Russell settles on "Seattle and Amazon." But it's not necessarily Seattle's population boom or Amazon's employment boom that inspires the comparison. Russell argues that Amazon Web Service sells computing power Ford once sold horsepower—thus altering the geography of the United States.

The history of industrial eras in the United States, according to the argument, is one of divergent wealth and shifting geographies:

When Pittsburgh was king, physical geography determined the economic geography. Wealth diverged. Detroit leading the way, automobiles obliterated that natural advantage. Silicon Valley enjoyed a different kind of divergent advantage. Stanford University innovation was unencumbered by legacy costs and development. California was the frontier, where the ambitious could escape the stifling ways of the old guard. First the integrated chip and then the microprocessor, Silicon Valley was the epicenter of the computing revolution. Wealth diverged. Seattle leading the way, the cloud is undermining historical happenstance. We are living in the world of Jeff Bezos right now.