View original at www.dcvelocity.com

We heard it through the grapevine: There are reportedly plans afoot to turn Detroit into a regional hub. But don’t go dancing in the street just yet. Economic cycles come and go, but geography is forever. For the city of Detroit, whose cycle has followed the "to hell and back" trajectory, its future as a major North American logistics player could hinge on whether transportation and logistics users view its location on the continent’s map as a blessing or a curse. Detroit sits at the nexus of U.S.-Canada trade, with its proximity to Toronto, considered the gateway to Canadian commerce. It is located near four of the five Great Lakes as well as the U.S. transcontinental railroad system that connects with Great Lakes port traffic. It is home to three major U.S. interstate highways: I-75, I-94, and I-96. Between 1,000 and 1,450 acres of land are located near urban areas ripe for industrial development, a rarity among large metropolises, according to WSP| Parsons Brinckerhoff, a New York-based engineering and professional services company that last year prepared an extensive report for the Michigan Economic Development Corp. outlining Detroit’s potential as a logistics center. As the North American hub of auto production, Detroit has a superb automotive logistics infrastructure backed by the highly skilled employees needed to keep the automotive supply chain humming. The city and the state of Michigan are well positioned to attract high-tech investment as vehicles become embedded with more technological features than ever before, according to Walter Kemmsies, managing director, economist, and chief strategist of the ports practice for Chicago-based real estate and logistics services giant JLL Inc. In an era when cars are becoming computers on chassis, a company like General Motors Corp. will find itself competing as much with Microsoft Corp., the Seattle-based software behemoth, […]