The failed company towns of the 19th and 20th centuries have long served as a cautionary tale against the paternalism of the manufacturing sector and utopian ideals of planned developments.
Consider Henry Ford’s 3,900-square-mile Fordlândia development in Aveiro, Brazil, which was constructed in the 1920s to house 10,000 workers to produce rubber for the Detroit-based company. After failing to both grow rubber trees and integrate with the local community, by 1934, the city was abandoned. Even earlier, in the 1880s, engineer George Pullman established his eponymous company town on Chicago’s South Side for the employees who manufactured his sleeping railcars. The town’s concept famously met its demise soon after an 1894 strike that left 34 people dead.
Pullman National Monument in Chicago
More than a century later, there’s a new twist on the company town: Instead of being an exclusive (and captive) place for a corporation’s employees to live, the new version is an information sponge built by a single company for the benefit of its database. The residents are employees in the sense that they contribute to the company’s bottom line—without actually working for the company itself.
Last year, billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates purchased 25,000 acres of land west of Phoenix with $80 million from his Cascade Investment group. His vision: an 80,000-residence smart city that “embraces cutting-edge technology, designed around high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and distribution models, autonomous vehicles, and autonomous logistics hubs,” according to a statement from the project developers Belmont Partners.
Pullman National Monument in Chicago
One state away, near the Denver International Airport, Japanese electronics giant Panasonic is developing an almost 400-acre smart city. It will feature a solar-powered micro-grid, connected LED streetlighting, and an autonomous shuttle.
Given that the market for smart city technology and products is expected to exceed $1 trillion within the next five years, it is no surprise that corporations, funds, and entrepreneurs are investing in such developments. But unlike company towns of the past, tech companies do not need to build and own the towns themselves. Instead, with their data-gathering capacities, all towns become company towns.
jamesteohart
The New Gold Rush
Given trillion-dollar projections for the smart city market, it should come as no surprise that the worldu2019s largest tech companies see it as a major growth opportunity. Legacy players such as AT&T and Honeywell are in competition with giant upstarts such as Amazon and Alibaba, offering a host of products, systems, and services to governments, utilities, and other potential clients. Market research firm Compass Intelligenceu2019s A-List in Smart Cities Index ranks the top companies in the space, those that provide solutions for u201cenergy, transportation, real estate, management systems, device connectivity, data capture, video analytics, lighting, public safety, public health, crisis management, and automation.u201d
1.tGeneral Electric
2.tIntel
3.tAT&T
4.tMicrosoft
5.tAmazon (AWS)
6.tHoneywell
7.tIBM
8.tGoogle
9.tCisco
10.tDell
11.tEricsson
12.tQualcomm
13.tHuawei
14.tVerizon
15.tSchneider Electric
16.tSiemens AG
17.tNokia
18.tOracle
19.tApple
20.tSAP
21.tJohnson Controls
22.tHitachi
23.tABB
24.tHPE
25.tDeutsche Telekom (T-Mobile)
26.tNvidia
27.tSamsung
28.tSoftBank
29.tItron
30.tAlibaba
31.tSprint
32.tInterDigital/Chordant
33.tFacebook
34.tBaidu
35.tTencent Holdings
36.tST Engineering
37.tOSIsoft
38.tAlstom (by GE)
39.tEaton
40.tDNV-GL
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