History Main / CompanyTown

* The settlements in ''VideoGame/Anno1800'' are this. Instead of paying taxes, income comes from your workers buying essentials from you.

Not all company towns were bad; some companies genuinely tried to provide decent living conditions for their workers. Others exist simply because the town in question is so remote, no one else wants to move in.

** Springfield itself is a Downplayed example; the town is largely dominated by CorruptCorporateExecutive Montgomery Burns and his power plant, which not only functions as an energy monopoly, but is also one of the main job providers. The plant is incredibly poorly maintained, produces a lot of pollution and presents a massive danger to the citizens, but they're stuck with it, as any time the plant is closed down or resorts to layoffs, Springfield plunges into an economic depression.

* ''WesternAnimation/CostumeQuest'''s Auburn Hollow is a parody of mining towns, where the main export of their mines was nougat.

[[caption-width-right:350: [[Music/TennesseeErnieFord ♫ Tell St. Peter that I can't go... I owe my soul to the company store. ♫ ]]]]

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* ''WesternAnimation/{{Recess}}'': A child-level example; in one episode, T.J comes back to school after being out with the flu for a week, only to discover that the entire playground has formed an economic system around the latest fad - Monstickers bubble gum cards! Starting from the bottom, T.J ends up virtually taking over the playground and turning it into this trope since he controls nearly all the cards, and kids spend all recess either working for him or doing nothing (the latter of which he institutes a fine on). His empire crumbles when the fad runs it's course and is replaced by something new.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "You Only Move Twice" has an interesting example in Cypress Creek, built for Hank Scorpio's Globex Corporation – Scorpio treats his employees very well, but he's also an AffablyEvil parody of a Bond villain, who ([[NiceJobBreakingItHero thanks to Homer]]) managed to seize the East Coast by the end. Cypress Creek is a Company Town in only the most literal sense of the word though, having more in common with a planned community than the traditional version of this trope. The wages for employees are high, standard of living is through the roof, and the entire town is clean, well maintained and a generally great place to live... unless you're the Simpson family, who are used to the general bleakness and crapsackness of Springfield.

* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': [[https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2015-08-16 Namechecked and defied]] by Sanctum Adroit, a [[LawEnforcementInc law enforcement company]] that's firmly lawful and good, who have a strict "No Company Towns" policy. Requiring Massey, the lawyer for [[PrivateMilitaryContractors Tagon's Toughs]], to explain he's representing a newly established nation-state that's contracted his employer for defense, not the Toughs themselves.

* ''VideoGame/JurassicParkTrespasser'' had the town of [[Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs Burroughs]] situated on Isla Sorna to provide a place for the staff of Jurassic Park a place to live while everything was being built. Seemingly averts the corruption aspect of this trope, as it might've been a decent place to live if it weren't for all the carnivorous dinosaurs and whatnot. There is a company owned store call the [[JustForPun "InGeneral Store"]] though.

[[folder:Film]]

* ''Film/DarkWaters:'' Parkersburg West Virginia is a town where [=DuPont=] employs most people and are mentioned as having showered favors on people who played ball with them

* ''Anime/GhostHound:'' Suiten has [[ResearchInc Dai-Nippon Bio]] that employes a lot of the town, but there are also smaller businesses on the side, like Tarou's parents' brewery.

* Sweetville in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "The Crimson Horror" is based on real-world Victorian "model settlements" by paternalistic employers like Port Sunlight and Bourneville. It's actually a front for a murderous eugenicist cult.
** The much earlier story ''The Sun Makers'' features a company ''planet''.

* ''Series/{{Firefly}}'': Jayne explicitly uses this term for Canton, the ceramics workers' town on Higgins' Moon in "Jaynestown". It's one of the bad ones: Magistrate Higgins pays the workers almost nothing so he can get filthy rich, and they're mostly indentured so they can't legally quit. The RPG rulebook says that Higgins' son has been working to improve conditions since the episode, however.

* In ''Series/{{Incorporated}}'' the Green Zones are luxury versions. Gated cities and suburbs where the owning corporation's management can live without being disturbed by the Red Zone slums surrounding them. If someone gets fired though... they're out of luck.

* Quarra, in the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Workforce", appears to be a Company ''Planet''.

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_city closed cities]] played a similar role in the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]], except they were usually built around state-controlled research institutes and military production facilities (particularly nuclear and aerospace) rather than privately-owned companies. Currently, both closed cities and the more traditional company towns exist in Russia; the latter tend to be concentrated in the resource-rich but severe Northern Siberia. Including a whole Company City, Norilsk. Ukraine contains probably the most infamous Soviet closed city: Pripyat, former home to Chernobyl nuclear plant employees and their families… and currently a GhostTown.

* ''Literature/TheWitchOfKnightcharm'': Myth/TheScholomance, an evil WizardSchool, functions as this since the school itself is the students' only source of supplies such as food, medicine, magical equipment, and so on. This means that the students have to follow the orders of the Scholomance elite and play by their rules in order to get 'passes' like infirmary passes, school store passes, etc., which function as the local scrip. While some of the students like Lily are implied to be extremely rich outside of the school, their money is no good there; Scholomance passes are the only (legal) way for the students to get supplies.

When a town is controlled by a single company, you have a company town. In RealLife these were popular in the days before automobiles allowed workers to freely commute. A company would build a town to provide local services such as libraries and general stores. The downside was that many companies [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging price gouged]] and used [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage debt bondage]] to keep their employees from leaving for a better job in a form of IndenturedServitude. Their prevalence was one of the factors that led to the formation of labor unions in the USA in the '20s and '30s, often with violent resistance from these companies and their {{Tyrannical Town Tycoon}}s, who employed {{Pinkerton Detective}}s or similar to suppress labor organizing and strikes. Not all company towns were bad; some were created to provide a better standard of living and create jobs. Others exist simply because the town in question is so remote, no one else wants to move in.

-->''You load sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go - I owe my soul to the company store!''

* Many business owners in ''Literature/AtlasShrugged'' had towns named after them pop up around their businesses (ex. Marshville for Roger Marsh, Wyatt Junction for Ellis Wyatt). When the government sets out to rid the world of these greedy, selfish villains and their evil moneymaking ways, they reply, [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor "Okay,"]] and obligingly close up shop. The loss of each business triggers a set of DisasterDominoes as the businesses that grew up around it close as well, putting more and more people out of work, thus causing more businesses to go bankrupt upon losing their customers...