Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne is headed downtown?

[Hermod]

It has nothing to do with nightlife. You simply can't run a creativity-dependent company from the most mind-numbing environment on earth.

Yes, Thomas Edison got his start in the vibrant downtown of the great metropolis of Port Huron.

Daimler-Benz is in the tiny burg of Sindelfingen quite a few miles outside of Stuttgart.

Volkswagen is in Wolfsburg, not a hot spot on a tour of the "Great Cities of Europe".

[JBMcB]

Yes, Thomas Edison got his start in the vibrant downtown of the great metropolis of Port Huron...

In all fairness, he opened his laboratories in the bustling metropolises of Menlo Park and West Orange, NJ.

Then there's Silicon Valley, which was basically a huge industrial park until recently.

[Detroitnerd]

Yes, Thomas Edison got his start in the vibrant downtown of the great metropolis of Port Huron.

Oh, you. As someone who has read deeply on Edison, including Matthew Josephson's excellent biography, I can tell you Edison was more cosmopolitan than you portray him. Sure, he was a hick, a tobacco-chewing bumpkin to many. But when he was a kid, he used to spend time voraciously reading at the Detroit Free Library, haunting the typesetting rooms at Detroit newspapers, working as a boisterous candy butcher on trains from Port Huron to downtown Detroit, very much rubbing elbows with the people and taking advantage of the culture and knowledge available in the largest city in the area, Detroit.

In a lot of ways, Edison was a jerk, but don't say he didn't seek out culture or that it wasn't available to him at the time.

[ghettopalmetto]

Yes, Thomas Edison got his start in the vibrant downtown of the great metropolis of Port Huron.

Daimler-Benz is in the tiny burg of Sindelfingen quite a few miles outside of Stuttgart.

Volkswagen is in Wolfsburg, not a hot spot on a tour of the "Great Cities of Europe".

Fair enough. But it doesn't negate the fact that the CEO is seeking office space in Detroit. Perhaps he just plain doesn't want to work in Auburn Hills [[perish the thought!). I'm sure he has a valid reason.