It's still quite the secret but Detroit's startup community is strong and growing. The skeptics will say when you're that far down it's easy to grow. But it's been ten years and slows no sign of slowing down.
Instead of being jealous of Detroit suddenly getting the attention Ann Arbor leaders are now beginning to find ways to work together. Sadly I wish the rest of the state could get some of their joint mojo.
I just wish I could get some decent coney dogs or Buddy's Pizza out here. (No I haven't been to Uncle Frankie's yet)
Going back to mason's point though the size of Greater Detroit metropolitan area is hugely underestimated. And not tapping into that area for market or talent opportunities (or delicious Coney dogs) is an unfortunate mistake.
http://americanconeyisland.com/coneykit.htm
Course if you prefer Lafayette Coney Island you're out of luck ;<).
Buddy's Pizza is finally starting to expand all over Michigan. Got one going in just down the street next Spring. Eventually they will make it out your way. Until then there's always GoldBelly:
Zingermans has a pretty decent virtual class to teach the Detroit style pizza :)
It's getting better but the amount of ignorance about Detroit is amazing! I tried once talking an evangelist into adding Detroit to the road show around twenty years ago. There had just been an article in Time magazine and it said something like the city had the lowest number of college graduates per capita of any major city and there were less than 670,000 people. The guy immediately hit me with that fact. He said we couldn't possibly go to a place that small and if we did there wouldn't be that many developers.
I said that may be true for the city of Detroit but the Detroit metro has over four million people and I assure you there are a lot of developers. So they decided to add Detroit as a tour stop and he later told me that it was one of the largest and most enthusiastic audiences on the entire tour.
Even today Detroit gets left off most tech tours and when one does add them they're pleasantly surprised by the turn out. That's despite the fact that Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Twitter have offices there.