Detroit entrepreneurs are learning to rely on each other, finding the seeds of a new economy in resources discarded by corporate America. by Stacy Mitchell
posted Dec 17, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to spend a day in Detroit meeting with local entrepreneurs and sharing ideas for spurring small business development.
Detroit is an enormously challenged city. It is the poorest big city in the U. S. Nearly one in three workers is unemployed. The city's population has shrunk to a mere 40 percent of what it once was. Vacant houses and empty lots comprise large portions of Detroit's land area.
This devastation makes all the more remarkable the new tendrils of economic activity that are emerging around the city. While these homegrown enterprises are still modest relative to the scope of Detroit's unemployment, they point the way to a promising new economy—one that is locally owned, oriented toward local needs, and capable of cultivating value from resources discarded by corporate America.
At the end of my visit, I came away feeling that Detroit has quite a bit to teach the rest of us about how to build a local economy from the ground up. Here are five ideas from Detroit that every city could benefit from.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/5-ideas-from-detroit?utm_source=wkly20101217&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleMitchell
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