Is it bad news that Amazon has decided not to grow in Queens? As someone who was raised in Queens, I think it's not bad news.

There are considerations other than jobs -- primary among them is affordable housing. Manhattan is out of reach for most, and Brooklyn is getting gentrified at a huge rate, and it's now moving into Queens in exactly the area Amazon wants to build.

Having been through the boom in the Bay Area, I can tell you there is definitely a downside to all the high paying jobs. It means people of average means are pushed out of their neighborhoods. And everything that made the neighborhoods special goes with them.

Queens is an amazing melting pot. Probably the most ethnically diverse county in the country. If you own real estate in Queens then of course you want Amazon, because it will make the value of your property go up. But if you live there and want to keep living there, and are of modest means, it's not such a great deal for you.

The Queens melting pot with immigrant families building new lives in the US is the kind of growth New York has always built on, generation after generation. I don't think importing the kind of growth seen in Seattle or San Francisco is in the city's interest.