The Tesla founder has broken ground on a plot in Texas, while Google and Meta are building workers’ homes in California. Should we be celebrating or worrying?
elcome to Snailbrook, Texas. Established: 2021. Population: about 12, but with many more to come. In fact, in a decade or two, Snailbrook could be a gleaming, utopian city, shaped by the futuristic vision of the unavoidable tech titan of our day,Musk is moving into Texas big time.
They were often closer to prison camps than ideal cities. Colorado coal-mining towns owned by John D Rockefeller were policed by armed guards, who prevented anyone entering or leaving.wrote that the miners’ dwellings “smack of the direst poverty … Not all of the houses are equipped with water, and practically none have sewerage … The people reflect their surroundings; slatternly dressed women and unkempt children throng the dirty streets and alleys of the camp.
Many of them still stand today: Creswell in Derbyshire, built by the local coal-mining company; Titus Salt’s Saltaire and Joseph Rowntree’s New Earswick in Yorkshire; Port Sunlight on the Wirral, founded by William Lever to house workers at his soap factory; and the textbook example, Bournville, near Birmingham, built by the Cadbury family.Photograph: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
Crucially, Bournville was not exclusively a workers’ town: Cadbury employees made up only 50% of its population. In 1900, Cadbury put the Bournville estate under the control of an independent charitable trust, which still manages it today. So unlike in many company towns, residents’ tenancy was not dependent on their employment status. Bournville remains a nice place to live, says Richmond, with a mix of private and social housing .
Just as the Disney corporation negotiated concessions from state authorities to effectively police and service its Florida domain , so Musk was attracted by Texas’s relatively low taxes and loose planning regulations. As Ambrose puts it: “As a Texas landowner, you can pretty much do damn well what you want.”
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