Detroit was the Silicon Valley of the first few decades of the 20th century. What would be interesting would be to study why Detroit failed.

My thoughts are that, as companies became larger, they calcify and innovation ceases. Graham mentions Detroit in passing in that article but doesn't acknowledge that, in the 1910s Detroit WAS a hub where enormous innovation was taking place. I want to ask: where did Detroit's nerds go? The region still is quite wealthy[0] and has more millionaires than San Jose. However Detroit has neither an intact urban core, nor a flagship university. The auto industry barons (like Henry Ford or Walter Chrysler) never built a namesake college, the reason for that I'm not really sure.

Graham also mentions Pittsburgh in the article. As a native of the city I think he discounts the changes that have taken place in the decades since he has lived here. There is definitely an interesting old urban city here with a reasonable sized start-up scene. The winter weather is no worse than a place like Boston. He's right about the lack of VC wealth, though. It seems that all the old steel money isn't really interested that much in funding tech start-ups, although I think that's slowly changing too.

[0]http://247wallst.com/2011/07/13/the-american-cities-with-the...

Clearly part of the reason related to the substantial downsizing of the auto industry, which was the major industry in Detroit (and still is to a lesser degree).