#1559 Company Towns are a Bad Solution to a Real Problem

Air Date 5/13/2023

Today, we take a look at the history and resurgent idea of the company town, sometimes described by other names to obscure the reality, and the problem of affordable housing they are trying to solve.

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Transcript

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SHOW NOTES

Ch. 1: Un-American and yet, totally American Company Towns - Knowing Better - Air Date 1-23-22

There's a tendency to think about company towns as a quaint relic of the past, something that disappeared a century ago. But company towns aren't just some quirk of American history, they are American history.

Ch. 2: Chicago's South Side Nightmare - The Rise and Fall of Pullman's Utopia - It's History - Air Date 10-22-22

The neighborhood we know today as Pullman was the first industrial planned community in the U.S., explicitly built for the Pullman Palace Car Company employees.

Ch. 3: The Coal Town System - PBS - Air Date 1-13-16

West Virginia coal operators built small, company-owned towns for their miners to live in. The coal towns were almost always unincorporated; there were no elected officials, no independent police forces.

Ch. 4: Why Elon Musk Is Planning Towns for Tesla, SpaceX and Boring Co. Workers - Wall Street Journal - Air Date 5-8-23

In the almost 200 years that company towns have existed in the U.S., rarely do these planned communities live up to their creator’s utopian vision. WSJ explores why Musk is looking to the company town model for his properties in Texas.

Ch. 5: Un-American and yet, totally American Company Towns 2 - Knowing Better - Air Date 1-23-22

Ch. 6: Elon Musk Wants To Build DYSTOPIAN Company Town - Breaking Points w James Li - Air Date 5-6-23

James Li breaks down the dystopian dreams of Elon Musk to build a modern-day company town.

Ch. 7: The Housing Crisis Is So Bad Disney Is Building Housing For Workers - TYT - Air Date 11-26-22

Workers are struggling with the high cost of living near Disney World, so the corporate giant will build 1,300 affordable housing units near the park.

Ch. 8: Seattle’s Social Housing Initiative Camille Gix - The Majority Report - Air Date 3-14-23

Camille Gix then joins to walk through Seattle’s I-135 initiative, what “Social Housing” implies, and why this model can bolster the reclamation of housing from the financial world to the public realm.

Ch. 9: Vishaan Chakrabarti: A vision of sustainable housing for all of humanity - TED - Air Date 2-20-22

Architect Vishaan Chakrabarti wants us to start thinking about how we'll house all these people -- and how new construction can fight climate change rather than make it worse

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MEMBERS-ONLY BONUS CLIP(S)

Ch. 10: Un-American and yet, totally American Company Towns 3 - Knowing Better - Air Date 1-23-22

Ch. 11: Arizona schools build tiny homes for teachers - CNN - Air Date 5-1-23

School districts in Arizona are building their own affordable housing for teachers, hoping to recruit a bigger and better batch of educators to address the ongoing shortage.

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FINAL COMMENTS

Ch. 12: Final comments on the right to repair and why we all live in a company town

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MUSIC (Blue Dot Sessions)

SHOW IMAGE

Description: Black and white photo of simple, identical concrete row houses fading off into the distance.

Credit: “Deutsch: "Schweizer Häuschen" in der Bayreuther Sozialsiedlung Burg” by Röhrensee, 1972 | License: CC BY SA-3.0 | Changes: Cropped

 

Produced by Jay! Tomlinson

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