Company town

A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets and recreation facilities. They are usually bigger than a model village ("model" in the sense of an ideal to be emulated). Some company towns have had high ideals, but many have been regarded as controlling and/or exploitative. Others developed more or less in unplanned fashion, such as Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, United States, one of the oldest, which began as a Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company mining camp and mine site nine miles (14.5 km) from the nearest outside road. Traditional settings for company towns were where extractive industries – coal, metal mines, lumber – had established a monopoly franchise. Dam sites and war-industry camps founded other company towns. Since company stores often had a monopoly in company towns, it was often possible to pay in scrip through a truck system, although not all company towns engaged in this particular practice. In the Soviet Union there were several cities of nuclear scientists (atomics) known as atomgrad; particularly in Ukraine those were Pripyat, Varash, Yuzhnoukrainsk among others. Typically, a company town is isolated from neighbors and centered on a large production factory, such as a lumber or steel mill or an automobile plant, and the citizens of the town either work in the factory, in one of the smaller businesses, or are a family member of someone who does. The company may also donate a church building to a local congregation, operate parks, host cultural events such as concerts, and so on. A town that existed prior to the establishment of a primary business may not officially be a company town, but if the majority of citizens are employed by a single company, similar conditions may exist (especially in regard to the town's economy). Similar dependencies may exist in specific neighborhoods or areas within larger cities.