Businesses taking up a challenge

One of the reasons I am motivated to stay and try and help Detroit is the challenge and the opportunity: in Chicago, New York, Dallas, or basically any other major city in America, an average person really cannot have the impact that he or she would in Detroit.

According to this Detroit News article, apparently some companies are thinking along similar lines: http://detnews.com/article/20100722/OPINION03/7220393/1409/Third-World-aura-draws-businesses-to-Detroit

Some highlights:

"If urban turnaround hasn't always been at the top of corporate agendas, it could be moving up the scale, as the mystique of doing business thousands of miles away wears thin and high national unemployment rates create new empathy for Michigan's jobless.
In this climate, few cities offer more visibility or potential reward for such commitment than Detroit.
"Our clients are interested," says Bryan, whose privately held company specializes in health care data base management. "They're trying to contribute to the revitalization of Detroit." "

"Detroit, though, offers some of the low-cost benefits of doing business in the Third World. The rent at 1001 Woodward Ave. -- between $14 and $17 per square foot -- is rock-bottom for a major city.
Detroit's labor costs have dropped so far, even for technology workers, that Bryan tells his Fortune 500 clients they'll pay only 5 percent more to work through Detroit than to send their business to Brazil."

""It's an opportunity to turn around an American city," says Bill Emerson, the CEO of Quicken."