This Doctoral dissertation Research Support project investigates company towns in the United States and explores how they have changed over the past one hundred years. Initially designed by budding industrial manufacturers to centralize production operations in a single place, company towns have emerged in contemporary times as exclusive suburban hamlets for the upper middle class stressing homogeneity, security and community. Industrial towns centered around the extraction and production of a single good, such as the plethora of coal towns which dotted the landscape of Eastern Kentucky during the last century, have given way to private gated communities whose inhabitants are the telecommuters driving the service economy. The objective in this Dissertation is to track these changes in urban form and political economy and attempt, using quantitative and qualitative methodologies, to explore the ramifications corporate towns as profit-oriented enterprises have on the development of viable communities.
The towns chosen for this study are Pullman, Illinois -an example of industrial paternalism from the Gilded Age; Radburn, New Jersey-the Regional Planning Association of America's ill fated planned community constructed on the eve of the Great Depression; and Celebration, Florida-the Disney Corporation's attempt at constructing a community based on its version of the values of 1950s America. Each town speaks both to the conditions of urban life at the time of its prominence as well as to the contemporary modes of political economy and culture informing its emergence.
This award allows the Doctoral Dissertation student to undertake a mail survey of the residents of Celebration, Florida. Thus, the comparative study will have statistical data by which to compare the communities and which will contribute to literatures on public opinion in privately operated cities.
This Doctoral dissertation Research Support project investigates company towns in the United States and explores how they have changed over the past one hundred years. Initially designed by budding industrial manufacturers to centralize production operations in a single place, company towns have emerged in contemporary times as exclusive suburban hamlets for the upper middle class stressing homogeneity, security and community. Industrial towns centered around the extraction and production of a single good, such as the plethora of coal towns which dotted the landscape of Eastern Kentucky during the last century, have given way to private gated communities whose inhabitants are the telecommuters driving the service economy. The objective in this Dissertation is to track these changes in urban form and political economy and attempt, using quantitative and qualitative methodologies, to explore the ramifications corporate towns as profit-oriented enterprises have on the development of viable communities.
The towns chosen for this study are Pullman, Illinois -an example of industrial paternalism from the Gilded Age; Radburn, New Jersey-the Regional Planning Association of America's ill fated planned community constructed on the eve of the Great Depression; and Celebration, Florida-the Disney Corporation's attempt at constructing a community based on its version of the values of 1950s America. Each town speaks both to the conditions of urban life at the time of its prominence as well as to the contemporary modes of political economy and culture informing its emergence.
This award allows the Doctoral Dissertation student to undertake a mail survey of the residents of Celebration, Florida. Thus, the comparative study will have statistical data by which to compare the communities and which will contribute to literatures on public opinion in privately operated cities.
