Axios: “When Amazon invited cities to compete for its second global headquarters a year ago today, it got reams of data from the 238 entrants — enough to learn details of the cities’ future plans that a lot of their residents don’t even know about, Axios’ Erica Pandey reports.

• Why it matters: The information effectively provided Amazon with a database of granular details about the economic development prospects of every major metropolitan area in the United States (and some in Canada).
• The database could help with expansion decisions that go way beyond HQ2.

Amazon’s warehouses are within 20 miles of 31% of the U.S. population, while Walmart owns stores within 20 miles of 98% of the population, says Cooper Smith, an industry analyst at Gartner L2…”