There is no real separation between your third and fourth ages. Mandelbrot was effectively working on the cloud for IBM I believe when he discovered that fractals could be used to reduce phone line noise that was problematic for the modems of the time. The cloud predates the World Wide Web. It is merely our perspective that tells us otherwise.

Amazon employs more people than those two companies because they employer warehouse type workers all across the country. The story of increasing population is more a story of urbanization of millennials than a story of Amazon "overhiring" (whatever that means).

Confused by that Blue Origin video—so much CG mixed into the footage I'm not sure if I'm seeing the rocket land or a dramatization. Can't find any unmolested footage of the event elsewhere.

We'll never be Detroit. Better climate and natural beauty. People will always live here, though industry may change.

I was hoping this dumb story would go away, but apparently not.

First, Seattle is half the size of Detroit. Detroit grew by focusing design around the automobile. See pretty much any StrongTowns post about why this is unsustainable in terms of tax base funding. Seattle has more density, which costs less to maintain.

Second, "The Cloud" is bullshit. We're talking about the internet; that's what breaks the link between labor and firms/geographic job markets. When I worked remotely (from the US) for European firms a decade ago, I wasn't using "The Cloud". Amazon is a huge player in retail, but a bit player in the internet. AWS brought in $1.5bil for Amazon's first quarter 2015, according to its wikipedia page. Meanwhile, first quarter 2014 it brought in $20bil. That means AWS is a mere 7.5% of that. Whooptie-friggin'-do.

Amazon could certainly crash, and Seattle could lose a bunch of jobs (and people), but this has happened before (Boeing, the dot-com bubble..). Seattle didn't turn into Detroit then, and it's not going to now if Amazon goes boom.

Seattle also lost thouands of jobs in a single day when the last valuable bits of WAMU were devoured by Chase. We bounced back, though the rebound has also entailed an alarming housing affordability crisis.

I'm mostly curious if there have been other major cities where a single corporation "owned" an entire neighborhood right off of the downtown core, requiring the overhaul of utilities and infrastructure, altering the culture and economy drastically, with every neighborhood around it changing and becoming dependent on the influence of the citizens/workers from that neighborhood. If the downtown actually depended on the adjacent existence of a homogeneous corporate blob so much that it might collapse if that entire neighborhood - and all of its oodles of cash - moved to another state or city... what would happen? Has it happened before? I'm not sure if we can compare that apples-to-apples with the regional impact of the loss of a Boeing, because it's so spread out - towns and cities becoming slightly depressed can be different from entire neighborhoods collapsing in a tightly-packed city. Or have I wandered down a dark alley in my own mind again? Most probably the latter.

It's ironic that even as technology is supposedly making geography irrelevant, there's absolutely no let up in folks that "must" live here in San Francisco / San Jose and will pay any price to do so. You're not a "player" unless you're within 60 minutes of Sand Hill Rd.

@7: Detroit?

Detroits undoing wasn't its reliance on one industry. It was the entitlement mentality of politicians and a skill-less population with the hubris to think he company's couldn't leave, and that government could protect them from the practical realities of the market.

Good luck liberals!

@5 For what it's worth, the $1.57 billion in revenue Amazon Web Services earned in Q1 2015 is a) mostly profit, unlike the retail side of its business where it has minuscule or negative profit margins, and b) almost 50% more revenue than it earned in Q1 2014 - a huge year-over-year increase. It's inaccurate to say "whooptie-do" about AWS as it is an incredibly important and rapidly-growing portion of Amazon's business. Ask anyone who works at Amazon and they'll corroborate this. (http://www.businessinsider.com/aws-reven…)

Agreed on all other points, though.

Oh please Seattle is the Cleveland of the 21st century.

Good Evening Charles,
Your posting title 'Seattle is the Detroit of the 21st Century' baffled me at first. I read the entire post and was still slightly puzzled but at least had some idea of what was being said. I'm not sure I agree with the premise of Pacific Standard's 'four technological ages' in America.

It is debatable but when I hear of Detroit now alas, I think of civic failure. Detroit is a great city in decline and has yet to recover if it ever will. From my understanding, Detroit has lost an enormous amount of people over the last 60+ years (from 1.86 million to 700,000). Much of the city is a 'ghost town'. It went from the Motor City to Murder City (most unfortunate). The term 'poverty porn' as I understand it emanated from Detroit. So, one can appreciate my bafflement.

Look, I understand the caveat that some great cities have relied on one large industry. Once technology changes an industry and an area may be changed forever. It's probably recurrent in some cities. But, I'm not sure what can be done. It IS most unfortunate and greatly problematic.

According to that theory *Silicon Valley* is the next Detroit. Seattle is the Detroit after next. So people shouldn't get so defensive ^_^

But theories of history like this are a lot of nonsense. Dividing time into named periods, all exactly 40 years long, is hocus pocus.

I think there are a number of notable differences between Seattle and Detroit, across many different areas:

Geography - Detroit is a city that is largely landlocked (yes, I know of the Great Lakes). Seattle is a major shipping and port town, on the Pacific Rim. We're one of the largest ports on the west coast. Due to our proximity to Asian markets, the city will always be a major shipping hub, regardless of what industry is in vogue.

Resources - the Pacific NW is an area rich in resources. The state generates more than 3x's the amount of electricity that we consume, so much of that energy is currently exported. It's also a major reason why manufacturing in this area has always been a sizable industry. If it weren't for the Grand Coulee Dam (the single most powerful electric powerplant in the Hemisphere), we wouldn't have become a economic powerhouse. Because of all this cheap power, we have some of the cheapest energy rates in the world. That alone means industry will come to our area.

Also, even though some may argue otherwise, we've been pretty good about maintaining our forestry resources, which is still a major economic asset, as we've been able to harvest and regrow our forest resources many times over the past 150 years, and will likely continue to provide much of the world with sustainably harvested wood for generations to come. Our agricultural output, is also sizable. Outside of the mid-west's feed corn and California's breadbasket, almost all of the rest of the fruits and veggies Americans eat comes from our state. Much of these resources are routed through Seattle.

Simply put, unlike Detroit, which lived and died by their sole industry, Seattle has been smart to not turn our backs on a diversified base of commerce. The simple fact that we still have heavy industry, like a steel mill and cement plant near the heart of our city, and some of the largest manufacturing facilities on the planet, within our metro area, is a testament that we value both manufacturing, along with technological commerce. It's no mistake that some of the globe's largest, new companies are based here, such as Starbucks, Microsoft, & T-Mobile, along with historically successful brands of Boeing, Weyerhaeuser and Holland America. (It still is a shame though that Boeing moved their headquarters elsewhere)

Government - When it comes to city governance, especially when it comes to corruption, it's not even close. It seems that Detroit, for several generations now, is completely unable to elect even the most basic, non-corruptible politician. Again, while Seattle has its problems, and people take issue with our politicians, they aren't being regularly arrested for corruption, bribes, and embezzlement.

Planning - in terms of city design and layout - even though locals complain about our lack of mass transit and infrastructure, Detroit was one of the few cities ever built in the world, where roadways & blacktop comprises more than 50% of the city's land area. Sure, it's the "Motor City" but when you dedicate the majority of your land simply to the car, leaving only a fraction of the land for homes, businesses, parks and forego any major form mass transit (outside of busses), of course you're building a sprawling city that is destined for failure.

I could keep going. I do think that there is a danger of letting a city become too dependent on a single industry, and as long as we keep an eye to the importance of the diversification of our economy, we'll be just fine. Businesses come and go, and industries go up and down. As long as we recognize this as a long-term trends, and work to protect our innate assets from damage (like a huge oil spill in the Sound), we'll continue to thrive. Most articles like this are simply designed to create buzz, but are light on historical reference, facts and logic.

@15 MrSteve007,
Excellent analysis of the differences between Detroit & Seattle. I concur.

Their football team has sucked balls almostas long as we have had a team. We're in the middle ( I hope ) of the winningest football of our franchises' history. There's that.

@17: Yes, the Lions usually stink, but Detroit absolutely kicks our ass when it comes to sports. They have four major sports teams who have won 22 championships. We currently have two teams who have won 1.

18 is the only person here who knows Detroit. Detroit is older than New Orleans, it's economy was originally based on shipping and it was thriving for decades before the model T was a twinkle in Henry Ford's eye. It has plenty of geographical logic and they do actually grow food in Michigan. What brought it to it's knees was white flight from the central city, followed by urban decay, crime, corrupt politicians, and the abandonment of the retail core by businesses. Shrunken Detroit is still slightly more populous than exploding Seattle.

Does AWS have a 'sharing economy' vision for renting spare cycles from home user's computers a la setiathome? uber-screen-saver?

@1 There was in my grandmother's house a popular science explanation of computers from the early 60s when my Dad was in college and the image was very clear: in every house, a terminal connected to a central mothership that would do more computing than could be fit into any one regular commercial building. The vision then was exactly what 'the cloud is'. At the time I thought it was ironic because when I saw the book was the time of windows 3.0 or 3.1 and all computer was becoming localized. In retrospect, that local computing thing was just a blip that didn't really take. An evolutionary dead end.