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Border Cities
September 23, 2007
Posted by: Carol
Had an interesting conversation tonight at the start of the Mayors Hemispheric Forum in Chicago. One consultant who will speak later this week suggested that the best hope for reviving Detroit is for the city to team up with Windsor, Canada, which is just across the border and within sight of downtown Detroit. The argument goes like this: The U.S. does not offer enough H1-B visas to attract the talent the nation needs. It's easier today for talent to migrate to Canada, so U.S. border cities should pair themselves with Canadian cities and encourage companies to run dual operations. He cited Microsoft's operations in Vancouver as evidence of the border strategy at work.
Richard Layman, September 25, 2007
This is stupid. Detroit's problem isn't lack of talent. It's uninnovative companies unable to rebuild and reform their business model. cf. Saxenian's comparison of the Rte. 128 corridor to Silicon Valley. Also see Adams' _The Bigness Complex_. The auto industry as a whole isn't unsuccessful. Just U.S.-based companies. Not to mention the difference in legacy cost, health, and pension issues. But the issue, with Saxenian's examples or with the auto industry, is what I call the difference between using resources intensively (less and better and often smaller companies) vs. using resources extensively (using more in horizontally integrated companies). How can some H1B workers from Windsor fix that?
Link: http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com