It is nice to look at for a day, but it is a dead and soulless place, and the lack of activity at night paired with the high/clean/bland architecture is somehow more frightening than walking down a narrow alleyway anywhere else in the city. It is a distinctly anti people feeling, knowing that a place was not built for you, but it is permitting you to stay there for now.
Also, Isle of Dogs is a great example of how private/public partnerships can lift an area out of poverty. The Tower Hamlets area which Isle of Dogs is a part of has been a very poor area with lots of drug/theft/poor housing problems etc. Then lots of high rises were built (including the one I lived in) and some petty crime remained, but the quality of life was pretty good there. The best things being really good access to public transport, access to the river, shops/restaurants an NHS health centre that isn't overwhelmed with patients etc.
I've heard stories of a person who worked at a certain bank getting into a fight for the second time in a bar and then getting banned from CW - they could not go to work anymore.
It is absolutely a place that sets narrow parameters for your behaviour and if you can operate within those parameters there are companies who pay well operating there, clean streets, no visible crime etc.
... where you are. Its just exported to elsewhere. South africa had a similar system, it was great for about 10% of people, less so for the rest.
If the company doesn’t keep them employed, voila they must leave. And presumably the company is not going to hire (or allow to live there) ‘undesirables’.
It's not that sort of company town. The Company is the town and the town is the The Company. They will own all the buildings and infrastructure, be responsible for providing all the services and as such get to decide who gets to live there and how, but they'll be doing so with a goal of running a profitable company/town. The people living there won't (necessarily) be working for the company. As long as you can pay, agree to live by their rules and aren't 'undesirable' in any other way you can potentially live there.
It’s the same thing, just with no customers being able to show up on site no?
Or do you think the company will allow randomly renting to non-employees in the housing? Or subletting or something?
The housing won't be (primarily) for company employees, but for anybody who can pay and gets approved. Most company employees will in fact probably be people doing maintenance and providing services to the residents, and they almost certainly won't be able to afford to live in the the town.
Company towns are one form of what former slaves called "wage slavery" in that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_Slavery
Capitalism is many things but certainly not flat or equalitarian.
The next town over. The theory is that if the town is good enough, rich people will pay a premium to live in this town rather than then one a few miles down the road. Then businesses will pay a premium to rent commercial space there since it will give them access to a 'better' class of customers etc. etc.
You commute, like people do today. Living in one town, working in another and having your parents in a third sounds completely normal