Chuck Salter from Fast Company magazine, which specializes in business and innovation, spent time in Detroit seeking out people who are doing things, big and small, that belie the national image of the city as a corpse.
He writes:
Detroit has often sought salvation in big solutions: a car company comeback; the Renaissance Center, a cluster of seven towers downtown; casinos; the 2006 Super Bowl; the 2009 election of Bing, a Detroit Piston star turned steel magnate. Nothing has worked.
But the city's depression--and the depressed real estate prices that came with it--created opportunities. And opportunity lures entrepreneurs. The startup types, like Jerry Paffendorf, with his Loveland Technologies. And the ones with lots of money, like Dan Gilbert, the founder and chairman of Quicken Loans, the third-largest mortgage provider in the country; Andy Dirorosi with his buses, among others.
