Reminds me of a neighborhood in Chicago called Pullman. Originally, it was a company town, founded by George Pullman of the Pullman Palace Car Company.<p>On the one hand, it was allegedly quite gorgeous and housing there had many amenities considered quite modern for the time. The town also had a very low mortality rate due to how clean it was.<p>On the other hand, George Pullman founded the town partly as a social enterprise, believing he could make his workers happy and productive through urban planning and strict rules. This partly meant eliminating businesses catering primarily to vice (the only establishment that served alcohol was the hotel, which workers rarely entered). He would also regularly inspect workers homes to ensure that they met certain standards of cleanliness.<p>It was also, first and foremost, a company town, and one that was expected to be profitable at that. As a consequence, you could only rent housing, not buy it, and the rent was expected to subsidize the town rather than the town subsidizing worker expenses. Additionally, public gatherings were prohibited unless sanctioned by the company, hence why visitors often remarked that the place looked empty.<p>In the end the company wound up cutting wages after the panic of 1893, but not cutting the already-high rents. This led to the Pullman Strike of 1894, which would go on for 2 months and would eventually end with the company being forced to sell its residential holdings, essentially ending the Pullman Company's reign over the town of Pullman. George Pullman would die 3 years later from a heart attack.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pullman" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pullman</a>
<a href="https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/blood-on-the-tracks-in-pullman-chicagolands-failed-cap-1574508996" rel="nofollow">https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/blood-on-the-tracks-in-pullm...</a><p>Oh, sure, these are tech companies, not railroad companies, but you have to remember that the Pullman Car Company was a tech company back in its era (a railroad car that functions as a hotel!), and George Pullman was regarded as a benign industrialist, much like how we might see Bill Gates today. The town of Pullman was considered bright and modern and "smart" for its time, much how we'd likely view a tech company town.<p>In the end, as much as we like to bemoan the inefficiencies of city government, we're probably better off. Nonetheless, I'm rather curious to see how this goes.