Giving Compass' Take:

• As we approach the one-year anniversary of Amazon announcing a competition to host their second headquarters in North America, Brookings examines how we got here — and the uncertainty of the project's future.

• For those in urban and economic development, it's important to look at the impact that a huge corporation has on a city's ecosystem. Does this so-called "prosperity bomb" reduce inequality or make it worse?

• Here are five more lessons learned from the Amazon headquarters search.

Sometime in the coming weeks Amazon will announce a short list of U.S. cities in which it will consider placing its new $5 billion, 50,000-person second headquarters. It is likely that these finalist cities will be large, prosperous, and located in the eastern part of the country ...

Outside of a few communities that have made their applications publicly transparent, the Amazon HQ2 proposal has generated more heat than light. The intensity of the debate draws not only from the lack of transparency, but from the breadth of societal questions that the HQ2 competition has brought to the public’s attention.

The most prominent and contentious question being discussed in the shortlisted cities:

Will Amazon’s arrival actually benefit local residents, particularly lower income and working class residents, or simply exacerbate existing structural inequities within metropolitan America?

Currently, it’s unclear exactly what HQ2 will offer in terms of labor market opportunities, but it will likely concentrate in occupations that require higher levels of education. According to Paysa, about 80 percent of Amazon employees have at least a Bachelor’s degree. For advocacy groups focused on equitable development, there is a deep skepticism that the massive infusion of wealth and prosperity accompanying HQ2 will help ameliorate existing inequities.

Two reasons animate this skepticism. First, due to its education requirements, there is a fear that Amazon will mostly hire people from outside the local labor market ... Second, if public incentives are provided — and those incentives are paid for by weakening investment in public goods on which lower income people disproportionately rely — then there could be an additionally regressive impact on the community.

Read the full article about Amazon HQ2 and what comes next by Joseph Parilla at Brookings.