You all know Elon Musk, come on. Tesla CEO, Twitter, SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink, Boring Company and half a dozen other major startups. he's decided to add a new title to his resume: owner of Snailbrook. Owner of an entire city.
According to the Wall Street JournalIndeed, the billionaire is working on building a "utopian" city in Texas near his under-construction Boring and SpaceX facilities.
What will Snailbrook be like
Musk's plans include building a place where his employees will be able to live by paying about $800 a month for a one- or two-bedroom house. Privilege prices in a place with benefits. Sure, provided you have to leave town within 30 days if fired or resigned.
The idea, favored by the recent laws of Texas and Nevada (which "open" to residential settlements of the large Big Tech groups), does not seem bad. On paper.
"Corporate" cities, a long history
Snailbrook is not a new idea. The history of cities built by large companies is not recent, it goes back a long way. It had embryonic moments (the residential parks created by the great Adriano Olivetti, for example). It has had sad moments (prison-camp-like mining towns where workers lived in spartan housing, sent their children to company-owned schools, and were paid in part in currency expendable only within the settlement).
Recently, the "sights" of technocracy have led to development plans for small Disney's "techno-city"., Meta villages and entire neighborhoods branded Google.
How can this be an "Elon City"?
Considering Musk's eccentricity and his "sporting" attitude towards employees I imagine the demographic of Snailbrook will be quite stormy. Something like "let's not get too attached to the neighbors, who we don't know if they are still there tomorrow".
Good thing Snailbrook won't be reserved for Twitter employees.
