Company town

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A company town is a town or city in which all real estate, buildings (both residential and commercial), utilities, hospitals, small businesses such as grocery stores and gas stations, and other necessities or luxuries of life within its borders are owned by a single company.

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[edit] Overview

Traditional settings for company towns were where extractive industries — coal, metal mines, lumber — had purchased a monopoly franchise. Dam sites and war-industry camps founded other company towns. Since company stores tend to have a monopoly in company towns, it was not uncommon for truck systems to emerge in isolated company towns.

Typically, a company town will be isolated from neighbors and centered (figuratively, if not literally) around a large production factory such as a lumber or steel mill or an automobile plant; and the citizens of the town will either work in the factory, work in one of the smaller businesses, or be a family member of someone who does. The company may also operate parks, host cultural events such as concerts, and so on. Needless to say, when the owning company cuts back or goes out of business, the economic effect on the company town is devastating, and often fatal.

Company towns sometimes become regular public cities and towns as they grow. Other times, a town may not officially be a company town, but it may be a town where the majority of citizens are employed by a single company, thus creating a similar situation to a company town (especially in regard to the town's economy).

[edit] In the United States

One of the first company towns in the United States was Pullman, Chicago, developed in the 1880s just outside the Chicago city limits. The town, entirely company-owned, provided housing, markets, a library, churches and entertainment for the 6,000 company employees and an equal number of dependents. Employees were required to live in Pullman, despite the fact that cheaper rentals could be found in nearby communities. In 1898 the Illinois Supreme Court required Pullman to dissolve their ownership of the town.

In the present-day United States, it is relatively rare for any place in which a single company owns all the property to be granted status as an incorporated municipality. Rather, companies will normally prefer their wholly owned communities to remain unincorporated as this permits administration of the community to be carried out by appointed company officers rather than elected officials. However, there are incorporated municipalities that are heavily dependent upon a single industry or organization and may be loosely considered a "company town", even though the company does not technically own the town. In this vein, Washington, DC is sometimes called "America's biggest company town" because of the federal government's dominance.

A different type of company town has appeared in the U.S. since the 1960s, where real estate companies started developing uninhabited tracts of unincorporated lands into huge master-planned communities. These can be called company towns since they were not developed as part of a city, but completely on their own. Often these towns then grow into full fledged cities and then become incorporated, such as Irvine, California. By contrast, The Woodlands, Texas is an example of a still growing company town that might be annexed by nearby Houston in the foreseeable future.

[edit] List of company towns

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Towns listed in bold are still considered company towns today; other entries are former company towns. See Company towns for an unannotated list of articles.

[edit] Europe

[edit] Belgium

[edit] France

[edit] Ireland

  • Rochfortbridge (County Westmeath), built by public company OPW in the 1840s as part of famine relief on the site of an original village and rebuilt 110 years later by Bord na Móna during the 1950s for its employees, the more modern phase being designed by architect Frank Gibney.

[edit] Denmark

[edit] Germany

[edit] Transnistria (Moldova)

[edit] Netherlands

  • Batadorp, Best municipality, developed by Bata Shoes
  • Heveadorp, Renkum municipality, developed by Hevea Shoes

[edit] Russia

Kstovo's Peace Square and the WWII monument, sponsored by its city's company LUKOIL.
Kstovo's Peace Square and the WWII monument, sponsored by its city's company LUKOIL.

Non-ferrous metal industry (the plants there are mostly owned by Norilsk Nickel):

Iron mining:

Non-metal mineral extraction and processing:

Oil and gas:

Petrochemical industry:

Russian writers and politicians commonly use the expression "градообразуюшее предприятие" (gradoobrazuyushchee predpriyatie, literally 'the enterprise that has created the town') to refer to the industrial facility - these days often part of a larger company such as LUKOIL or Norilsk Nickel - that is the city's main employer and the main source of funding for the city's budget.

[edit] United Kingdom

Main article: Model village

[edit] North America

[edit] Canada

[edit] United States

[edit] Australia

[edit] Asia

[edit] India

  • Kumarapatnam, Karnataka, developed by Grasim Industries, Aditya Birla Group. A small town developed solely due to two large scale units of Grasim Industries(textiles).
  • Nagda, Madhya Pradesh, developed by Grasim Industries, Aditya Birla Group. The town economy is mostly dependent on the 4 large scale units of Grasim Industries(textiles).

[edit] References

  • Linda Carlson, Company Towns of the Pacific Northwest, 2003 ISBN 0-295-98332-9 [1]
  • Buildings of Ireland [2]
  • Crawford, Margaret (1995). Building the Workingman's Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns. London & New York: Verso. ISBN 0-86091-695-2. 

[edit] See also

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