[URBAN NOTE] Five notes about cities: HQ2, subnational ties, mid-sized cities, rent, Trumpism

[rfmcdonald]

• MacLean's notes that the bidding of so many cities for Amazon's HQ2 had less to do with the actual bid and more with the optics of being able to make a bid.


• Global News notes Trudeau's touring of different American cities, like Los Angeles and Chicago, to emphasize Canadian ties with these cities. Canada, it seems, is working its subnational ties as well as the state-to-state ones.


• Jennifer Keesmaat notes at MacLean's that, with growing unaffordability in major Canadian centers like Toronto and Vancouver, mid-sized cities like Halifax and Winnipeg can take advantage if they implement the right policies.


• Noah Smith notes a study by economists suggesting that rent control has only limited positive effects and worse negative ones, over at Bloomberg View.


• Michael Adams and Doug Norris argue at The Globe and Mail that Canada, because of the concentration of such a greater share of our population in relatively few cities than the United States, is resistant to Trump-style populism.