Netease Technology News, April 4th, the village of Boca Chica in Texas, USA (Boca Chica) was once an isolated seaside community, regarded as a safe haven for retired elderly, snowbirds and people who like outdoor activities. I like to ride mountain bikes, go fishing or hang out by the water. Today, there are only six local residents left here, as well as the interstellar spacecraft facility of SpaceX, a US space exploration technology company.

During the day, tourists lined up on the road to take photos with the stainless steel spacecraft being developed by SpaceX. At night, the excavator plows the soil on the busy construction site. Before each test or flight of the interstellar spacecraft, residents will be notified in advance, suggesting that they temporarily evacuate for safety. So, what will the future of this Texas community look like? In March of this year, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter that he hopes to build his own city around Boca Chica and its surrounding areas.

Musk even thought about the name of the city. He called it Starbase. Musk wrote on Twitter this week: "Please consider moving to Stubbes, Texas or the greater Brownsville and South Padre areas, and encourage friends to do the same! SpaceX treats all kinds of engineers. The demand for, technicians, builders and basic support personnel is growing rapidly."

Building a new city may bring several benefits to SpaceX. In theory, this may help the private aerospace company attract future employees, create a friendly political atmosphere for it (because it is destined to become a noisy neighbor), and even develop potential transportation hubs that may appear near potential transportation hubs. Various convenience facilities pave the way.

"Company City" has a precedent

In fact, Musk is not the first entrepreneur to consider building a new city for his company. As early as the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, examples of "company cities" abound. Hershey, Pennsylvania, where chocolate production was the center, was one of them. In 1903, Milton Hershey, the founder of Hershey Chocolate, started the chocolate manufacturing industry there. Later, it became the "sweetest place in the world" and gradually expanded into a city.

As tech entrepreneurs became increasingly dissatisfied with government restrictions, the idea of a "corporate city" was revived. In Nevada, the governor even allows technology companies to build their own cities. Jared Mondschein, a physicist who studies the digital transformation of cities at Rand, said: “In my opinion, this move in Nevada is a new way of doing business. New ways to try to avoid the common challenges that certain companies have encountered in the past few years."

Historical "corporate cities" are usually formed to attract workers to new workplaces. Industries such as mining and smelting often locate work locations far away from population centers, which is inconvenient for daily commuting. Tracy Hadden Loh, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, said corporate cities are a necessary means of dealing with overruns in administrative expenses.

At the end of the 19th century, the American Smelting and Refining Corporation built Smeltertown in Texas, focusing on copper and lead mining. It is still managed by El Paso County, but the American Smelting and Refining Company operates a company store closely related to workers’ finances, provides credit, and deducts the purchase cost from the employee’s salary. The company also provided Smeltertown residents with many resources, including subsidies for vocational training, and funded the construction of roads to the town’s Catholic Church.

Monica Perales, associate professor of history at the University of Houston, said: “Usually, these amenities and relationships established between companies and communities may be beneficial to everyone, but in some ways, they It is also a form of control." Such an arrangement has given the company town a reputation for exploiting workers. Many employers are not paying in cash, but vouchers that can be exchanged for merchandise in company stores. In some cases, employers also own workers’ houses and deduct rent from their wages. Because the company has the power to set prices and issue credit, workers may find themselves mired in debt.

Smeltertown no longer exists. It was demolished in 1973 after nearly 100 years of prosperity. The reason was an air pollution lawsuit against the company and concerns about lead pollution and poisoning by children in the town.

Musk faces many challenges in building a city

Musk's plan for the city of Stabes is unclear. SpaceX did not respond to the reporter's request for comment, and Musk himself gave only some vague clues on Twitter. This week, he said that he expects the city of Stabes to grow "thousands of people" in the next year or two, and plans to donate $20 million to schools in Cameron County and $10 million to nearby Brownsville for " Revitalize the city center".

At present, it seems that Musk's city planning is still in the early stages. Representatives of SpaceX mentioned their interest in merging their facilities in the local facility in a conversation with the legal department in Cameron County, where the village of Boca Chica is located. But Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr. said that neither Musk nor his company have submitted the documents needed to start the process. He said: "In addition to wanting to merge, there are many things related to mergers."

First, Texas law requires that potential municipalities have at least 201 residents. Alan Bojorquez, a lawyer for several cities in Texas, said that a ruling by the state’s high court also stipulated that there must be a core area, and towns can develop around this core area. The area must have Ability to receive municipal services on a regular basis.

Then, residents will have to vote to decide whether they want to merge certain villages and towns. Bochoks said: “The law is very simple. The really difficult part of the merger process is public relations and persuading people living in the countryside to agree to become urban residents.” He said that successful mergers are usually due to “the great efforts between neighbors. Support, or oppose something, or achieve something they can't do on their own."

As SpaceX's ambitions in Boca Chica grew, the company began to provide residents with buyout services. As of March this year, SpaceX owns 110 plots in Cameron County through an affiliate. The company envisions it as a space port to the future, where interstellar spacecraft will fly regularly. As part of this plan, SpaceX is trying to drill for natural gas (to be used as rocket fuel) on nearby land and has a dispute with an oil company over this issue.

The merger into the city of Stabes may give SpaceX more control over local regulations, such as zoning, which may allow the company to conduct more test flights and launches without having to evacuate nearby areas for safety. It can also make the area more attractive to potential workers to relocate, allowing them to enter prosperous cities. Tracy, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, said: "The prosperity of this place itself is closely related to the survival of the company. If the company runs into trouble, it will produce very bad results."

South Padre Island resident Louis Balderas (Louis Balderas) has filmed SpaceX's progress in Boca Chica over the past two years for his popular YouTube channel LabPadre. He lives about a 45-minute drive from here, and he said that if the city of Stabes is established, he would be interested in moving there. But he said that the city needs more public services, electronic signals are terrible, and trucks are needed to transport water every month. However, Valderas still thinks: "If you can live in this city, that one would be so cool!" (Xiao Xiao) 

Source: NetEase Technology Report, translated by Google Translate