Laidlaw Summer I | BATTLING CORPORATE FIEFDOMS
Are corporations more powerful than nation-states? Are corporations capable of supporting their employees through regulations set upon them by the state, or by proactively creating social support networks in legal jurisdictions where the state fails to do so? A spatially manifested example of corporate sovereignty emerges in company towns, where a significant number of town residents are employees of a single company. Four company towns, identified through four factors (Modern-historical and tabula rasa-takeover dichotomies) were analysed from an intersectional economic, historical and urban planning perspective. Thanks to the Laidlaw Foundation, in-person documentation of two American towns, Pullman in Chicago, and San Bernardino in California, was made possible. Based on the study’s findings that companies tend to establish more beneficial spatial infrastructure based on their employees’ perceived corporate value, as well as revealing an encroachment on employees’ work-life balance, the study concluded with several recommendations on how to dismantle Amazon’s current labour monopsony within San Bernardino.
Keywords: Company towns, architecture, urban planning, physical infrastructure, spatial analysis, Pullman, San Bernardino, Google, BASF Ludwigshafen, Amazon, corporate sovereignty, corporatism, neoliberal economics
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