Musk said on personal social media that he wanted to build a city called Starship Base, which would include the village of Bokachica, where the SpaceX starship facility is located, and its surrounding area. However, with reference to legal regulations and the past history of American company cities, it is not easy to build a starship base.

Bokachka, Texas, which is adjacent to the seaside, was once a paradise for retirees, snowbirds and outdoors. Many people ride cross-country bikes, fish or relax by the water.

Nowadays, there are frequent traffic jams on the only highway in this area. There are only six permanent residents left, except for SpaceX's starship facilities. During the day, tourists line up to take photos with a prototype stainless steel spaceship under development. At night, excavators roared in the brightly lit construction site. Residents often receive notice of temporary evacuation before the ship begins testing.

There may be more changes in the future of this community. In March, Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, said on personal social media that he wanted to build a city that would include the village of Bokachica and its surrounding area.

The name is Starship Base.

"Please consider moving to a starship base in Texas, or the larger areas of Brownsville and South Padre Island, and encourage friends to do so! "SpaceX's demand for engineers, technicians, construction workers and all kinds of logistics personnel is growing rapidly," Musk said in a tweet. "

Building a city may have several benefits for SpaceX. In theory, it could help the private space company attract more employees, create a good external atmosphere for companies that are bound to affect the surrounding environment, and pave the way for various corporate facilities that may appear nearby. and even develop into a future transportation hub.

There is a precedent.

Mr Musk is not the first entrepreneur to consider building a city.

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, speaks in front of a prototype starship at the SpaceX facility in Bokaccika, Texas, on September 28th, 2019.

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the United States was full of ready-made examples of company towns. Hershey, Pennsylvania, is one of them. The idea has come back to life as technology entrepreneurs become increasingly unhappy with government restrictions. The governor of Nevada even wants technology companies to create their own local governing bodies.

In my opinion, this move in Nevada is a new way of doing business, a new way for companies to avoid common problems in recent years. "says Jared Mondschein, a physics scientist at the Rand Corporation who specializes in urban digital transformation. "the uncertainty in all these conversations is always: how will the people who live there react?"

The previous company town was usually designed to attract employees to move to a new workplace. Industrial facilities such as mining and smelting are often located far from populated areas, which is inconvenient for employees to commute on a daily basis. In this case, says Tracy Hardenlow, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank based in Washington, D.C., the corporate city has almost become a necessary way of management.

The American smelting and Refining Company (American Smelting and Refining) built a company town called Smeltertown in Texas in the late 19th century. Its main business is to refine copper and lead. The town is located outside El Paso, where white engineers and factory managers live in wooden huts with indoor heating pipes, while Mexican workers live in smaller brick houses.

The smelting town is managed by El Paso County, but the American smelting and Refining Company runs a corporate store that is closely related to employees' finances, which can be used on credit and deduct principal and interest from employees' wages. The company also provides some resources for the residents of the smelting town. It participated in the distribution of local water, funded vocational training and invested in the construction of a public road.

"these amenities built by companies in the middle of the community usually benefit everyone in the area, but to some extent, they extend their hands too long. Said Monica Perales, an associate professor of history at the University of Houston and author of smelting Town. "I've heard people call it the iron fist in velvet gloves. "

This arrangement has given the enterprise city a bad reputation for exploiting workers. Many employers pay their employees with vouchers that can be exchanged for goods at the company's store instead of cash. In some cases, the property rights of the workers are also owned by the employers, and the rent is deducted directly from the wages. Because companies have the power to price goods and make loans, workers can easily get into debt.

The smelting town no longer exists. In 1973, nearly a century after it was built, an air pollution lawsuit against the company, coupled with fears of lead poisoning among children in the town, led to the demolition of the smelting town.

Communities with the concept of a company town can also be found in Silicon Valley. The local technology company park offers laundry facilities, free meals and a commuter bus. These services provided by the company can dilute the boundaries between employees' life and work and eliminate the reasons to leave the campus, which may lead to longer working hours.

Another similar form of community is the Entrepreneurship Community (start-up societies), a small community that experiments with new policies and new forms of governance. They usually carry out regulatory reforms to accelerate technological progress, but the entrepreneurial community in the United States is generally not out of the planning stage.

'There are still doubts about who these entrepreneurial communities will help, 'says Isabelle Simpson, a postdoctoral fellow in geography at McGill University University. Although these communities are often seen as a way to help the poor by creating jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities, it is too early to tell whether it works.

There is also the concept of an innovative community. Under the plan put forward by Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak (Steve Sisolak), a company with at least 20, 000 hectares of undeveloped and uninhabited land could set up its own regulatory body with the same powers as county-level governments. According to reports, this means that companies can levy taxes within designated areas, establish school districts and court systems, and provide basic services.

A company called blockchain is interested in Nevada's plan. The company owns 27000 hectares of land in Stori County, near Reno, and has expressed interest in building a community based on blockchain technology. Jeffrey Berns, chief executive of blockchain, claims that the so-called smart city will have a research and development centre focused on housing, transportation and energy technologies that can help local residents and others.

"for too long, our state has watched helplessly as many neighboring states benefit from advanced technology industries," he wrote. "now is the time for Nevada to take the lead in developing technology solutions that will be used around the world. "

Burns and Sisolak insist that the community project will not be a traditional company town. Burns said the innovative community would be managed by an elected civic committee, which would be accountable to Nevada, just like Nevada's cities and counties. But a draft proposal says that at least in the early stages of community establishment, companies interested in creating innovative parks have the right to select candidates for at least two of the three members of the committee.

Regardless of the organizational structure of the governing body, companies have a huge influence on their members in areas where there is only one large company, says Zoe Willingham, an assistant researcher in the economic policy group of the Center for American Progress, a think-tank.

In this case, they say, "employees will not resign because there is no other way out", and large companies can also "depress wages and working conditions." "

Sisolak said that the goal of the innovation community is to promote "large-scale economic investment in Nevada and the opportunity to set a benchmark for the world blockchain technology center in Nevada." "

There is a long way to go

Similarly, Musk's plans for the starship base are not clear. SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment, and Musk himself only gave some clues in his tweet. He expects the starship base to increase by "thousands" in the next year or two. Musk plans to donate $20 million to schools in Cameron County and $10 million to Brownsville, near the SpaceX starship facility, to "revitalize the city center".

Planning for starship bases is at best at an early stage. SpaceX executives mentioned the company's interest in building a starship base during discussions with the Cameron County legal department, to which Bokacchika belongs. But last month Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino revealed that neither Musk nor SpaceX had begun to prepare the necessary approval procedures.

"in addition to wanting to merge land, there are a lot of things related to it," he said.

A prototype of the SpaceX starship can be seen in the distance in Bokachica near Brownsville on Sept. 28, 2019.

First, Texas law requires the participation of at least 201 local residents to establish a municipality. Alan Bojorquez, a municipal lawyer who works as city prosecutor for several Texas cities, said the Texas Supreme Court ruling also stipulated that there must be a core around which the town could develop, and that the area must be able to receive municipal services on a regular basis.

Residents must then vote on whether they want to merge to form a city.

"the law is very clear," Bojox said. "the most difficult part of the integration process is actually public relations and persuading local residents to agree to build the city. "

Success in building a city, he says, is usually due to "strong support from neighbors, either to face a problem in unison, or to achieve what they cannot do on their own."

As SpaceX's ambitions in Bokaccika grew, the company began to buy more land from local residents. As of March this year, SpaceX owned 110 plots in Cameron County through its subsidiaries.

SpaceX envisions this as a future spaceport for starships to fly routinely. As part of the plan, SpaceX plans to drill for natural gas from nearby land to extract rocket fuel, and has had a dispute with an oil company over the issue.

Building a starship base would give SpaceX more control over local regulations, such as air traffic control, allowing the company to conduct more test flights and launches without having to apply frequently to evacuate nearby areas for safety. It may also make the area more attractive to people who want to work at SpaceX.

"the viability of this place is closely related to the survival of the company," says Loze of the Brookings Institution. "" it's not necessarily idealized. If the business in this place is not successful, the result is bound to be very difficult. "

South Padre resident Luis Valderas (Louis Balderas) spent two years filming the progress of the SpaceX facility in the village of Bokacica. Valderas, who lives a 45-minute drive from Bokaccika, said he would be interested in moving there if he did build a starship base.

"the city needs more public facilities," Valderas said. "the cell phone signal there is very bad, and trucks are used to carry water every month. But Valderas said he enjoyed coming to the scene to watch the spacecraft test flight.

"I hope it's not just SpaceX employees," he said. "it would be cool to live on a starship base in Texas. "(Jiao Han)