"It amazes me that 50+ people could suddenly come out of the woodwork in an effort to “build a new relationship that’s not really a relationship” thinking it would give them an opportunity, or even an advantage, in the context of a set of hot companies.

When I think about the relationships I’ve developed, whether it be with investment bankers, LPs, co-investors, or anyone else, they evolve over a period of time. They don’t require boondoggles or fancy things; they require sincerity and substantive interaction over a long period of time. Then, when there are moments of opportunity, these are the people that I go to (and hopefully who come to me.)

There suddenly seem to be an abundance of “transaction relationships” out there. Entrepreneurs beware."

This is not to say that local homeowners are off the hook. In Ann Arbor, which I studied for my masters thesis, I think they deserved a good bit of blame on some occasions. In many cases former students, when they become homeowners, shift their alliances and values, something we see especially when students of the 60s, 70s, and early 80s reaped the benefits of urban deindustrialization as students with cheap housing and of urban revitalization as homeowners with rising property values.

"I am going to take a different perspective on the relation between young firms and job creation, however. I want to explain its mathematical inevitability, and I’m going to do that using the probabilistic idea of the drunkard’s walk."

"Florida assured Tessa that Detroit's plight "is not something I'm particularly happy about." He told her his wife is from Detroit. And then he told her that his friends who live in Detroit are making it as "freelancers" who "commute on an irregular basis" to work on projects somewhere else. He had recently given a speech to Detroit airport officials, who told him that the airport would remain viable. "That airport provides connective fiber," he told her. "Finding local employment is going to be a lot harder. So you either have to say, can I commute to work, by plane perhaps, or do I have to look for a place that has a better set of opportunities for me?"

There was no way to know if the answer was satisfactory: Tessa from Detroit was off the air."

"Richard Florida's exotic city, his creative city, depends on ghost people, working behind the scenes. Immigrants, people of colour. You want to know what his version of creative is? He's the relocation agent for the global bourgeoisie. And the rest of us don't matter."

Notes from the Carrboro/Ann Arbor "sister cities" meeting in Ann Arbor this week.