The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries saw the development of "company towns": locations where a single business ruled the roost.
Alhough these communities have become fewer and further between over the centuries, there are still many towns, and even cities, that are dominated by just one major firm.
Click or scroll through our gallery for some fascinating examples of company town from around the globe. All dollar amounts in US dollars, unless otherwise stated.
Nicknamed "America's biggest company town", Seattle is dominated by Amazon.
Prior to the pandemic, the e-commerce and cloud-computing giant reportedly owned as much office space in Seattle as the next 40 largest employers combined.
But while the firm has been instrumental in driving up salaries in the city and knocking down unemployment rates, it's also been blamed for Seattle's skyrocketing property prices and increased traffic congestion.
Amazon isn't phased, however, and continues to grow beyond Seattle's city limits. An expansion across Lake Washington into neighbouring city Bellevue has seen it hire close to 10,000 people in recent times. The company expects that the Bellevue location alone will have as many as 25,000 employees within the next few years.
Once most famous for being the home of legendary musicians like Joan Baez and Jerry Garcia, California's Menlo Park is now best known for its connection with Facebook. The social network giant is based in the Silicon Valley town and has become its chief employer, with upwards of 15,000 employees.
However, post-pandemic, Facebook's parent company Meta has said any staff whose job responsibilities allow them to work remotely can do so if they wish.
As such, it's possible that the social media giant’s influence in Menlo Park will diminish in the coming decade.
The best-known division of South Korea's leading family-run conglomerate (also known as a "chaebol" in South Korea), Samsung Electronics was founded in Suwon, a city 19 miles (30km) south of Seoul, back in 1969.
The division has its HQ in the city and also operates a massive factory complex there. Unsurprisingly, Samsung Electronics has risen to become the city's leading employer – reports suggest that it employs more than 100,000 people in Suwon.
Microsoft moved its HQ from Bellevue, Washington, to nearby Redmond in 1986, just before the tech titan went public.
Since then, its campus has ballooned in size and is set to get even bigger. The corporation is currently building an ultra-futuristic complex that comprises 17 buildings and will span a bewildering 520-acre (210ha) campus; that's the same size as more than 390 football fields.
At present, the company employs more than 50,000 people in Redmond and the wider Puget Sound area.
The Volkswagen Wolfsburg Plant was opened by the Nazis in 1938 and continues to be dominated by the German auto-manufacturer today.
Now the biggest vehicle-producing plant on the planet, the factory is based in the city, as is the Autostadt visitor attraction, which includes a museum and car showcase pavilions.
Cupertino, California, was once the stomping ground of Hewlett-Packard (HP). However, things changed when Apple acquired the campus from the tech company in 2010.
Apple's late founder, Steve Jobs, grew up in Cupertino, and Apple had acquired nine properties in the area by 2006. This eventually turned into Apple Park, the company’s doughnut-shaped headquarters that cost around $5 billion (£4.1bn) to build, making it, at the time, one of the most expensive buildings in the world.
And the tech firm didn't stop there. It continues to buy up Cupertino office buildings, including five properties in summer 2021 alone.
Silicon Valley's Mountain View is home to several tech brands – and the most dominant by far is Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
With its sprawling Googleplex HQ, the tech colossus is Mountain View's biggest employer. Prior to the pandemic, the firm’s local workforce was estimated to be around 23,000 people, and it’s likely even higher now due to the recently opened 42 acre (17ha) campus that will house 4,000 employees who work on Google's advertising team.
In 2018, Mountain View voters approved a tax on large employers to help cover local costs, including transportation improvements. The per-employee tax, effective as of January 2020, is thought to specifically target Google and its outsized impact on the city.
While IKEA's international HQ is located in the Netherlands, the flat-pack furniture firm that conquered the world still has a massive presence in its hometown of Älmhult, Sweden.
IKEA is growing its footprint in the area, spending $37.4 million (£31.3m) on a new office building that is expected to open next year.
And naturally, the Swedish town boasts its own IKEA, as well as an IKEA-themed museum and even an IKEA hotel. We can only imagine how yellow-and-blue that check-in experience is...
Netflix has more than 20 locations dotted across the world but is headquartered in the small town of Los Gatos, California, which has a population of around 32,000.
With an estimated 2,500 employees working out of its HQ in 2021, the streaming platform and content creator is the city’s top employer. It counts approximately 15% of the town's working-age population among its staff.
Japanese multinational Nissan owns and operates the UK's largest auto-manufacturing plant, which is located in the city of Sunderland.
Opened in 1986, the plant directly employs around 6,000 and supports as many as 30,000 in the region's supply chain, making it one of northeast England's major employers and an essential component of the local economy.
The factory announced in June 2022 that it will create 300 more jobs as it prepares to add new electric models to its manufacturing roster.
Electric car giant Tesla is renowned for its humungous "Gigafactories", which have had an enormous impact on the areas where they’re built.
Nevada won out against other states, with Reno chosen to be the site of the first Gigafactory in 2014. There are an estimated 7,000 employees at Gigafactory Nevada, and the factory currently has a footprint of 1.9 million square feet (176,515sqm).
Tesla says the project is only 30% complete so far and when it's finished, it's expected to be the world's largest building.
Located seven miles from downtown Portland, Oregon, is the city of Beaverton, which is the home of Nike's global headquarters.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the sportswear giant had 12,600 staff members at its world headquarters, making it one of the greatest employers in the entire Portland area.
It's yet another brand that has been busy expanding its HQ. This April, Nike celebrated the opening of the Serena Williams Building, which is the largest on its campus and measures in at over 1 million square feet (92,900sqm). That's around the same area as 140 full-size tennis courts, for the racket sport fans out there.
Electronics multinational Philips started out in Eindhoven, Netherlands, launching in 1891 as a humble light bulb manufacturer.
Since then, the pioneering conglomerate has been the driving force behind the Dutch city's phenomenal growth.
Although the organisation is now headquartered in Amsterdam, Eindhoven is still home to the company's research campus. More than 8,000 Philips' employees work in the area, generating the latest developments in technology.
Ever since Sam Walton opened his Walton's 5 & 10 store in the town's main square back in 1950, Bentonville in Arkansas has been dominated by Walmart. In fact, the retail giant even has its headquarters there.
By far the town's biggest employer, the Walmart HQ dates back to the 1970s and comprises a number of different buildings.
In 2019, the retail giant announced it was building a new and expanded facility that would house 14,000 staff on a 350-acre (142ha) campus. The project will open in phases, and should be complete by 2025.
And there's more than just offices making Bentonville a company town. It's also home to the Walmart Museum and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the latter being a gallery founded in 2011 by Walmart heiress Alice Walton.
Much like Hershey in the US, the Danish town of Billund boasts a theme park dedicated to its major employer: the aptly-named LEGOLAND.
Because of course, that company is LEGO, which was started by carpenter Ole Kirk Kristiansen back in 1932. The very first LEGO bricks were manufactured in the town and sold in 1949, and from those early days, the company rapidly expanded. It even opened its very own private airport in Billund in 1962 to save time for its jet-setting employees.
The toy giant recently celebrated the opening of its new HQ in Billund but that's not the only source of LEGO employment in town.
Along with the LEGOLAND theme park, Billund is also the location of the LEGO House experience centre, which opened in 2017 and is filled with 25 million bricks for visitors to play with.
A former centre of the lumber industry, the fortunes of Everett, Washington, were transformed in 1967 when Boeing started to build its gigantic aircraft assembly plant there.
The Boeing Company remains the county's top employer, with a workforce that runs in the tens of thousands.
In fact, the Boeing plant is the largest building in the world by volume, remaining in the top spot even after Elon Musk first opened his Gigafactory 1 in Nevada.
Herzogenaurach in Bavaria, Germany, has long been shaped by the business activities of the Dassler brothers, who ended their sneaker company Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik, known as Geda, in 1948 after an ongoing dispute.
Refusing to reconcile, each started his own company. Adi Dassler created sports brand Adidas, while Rudolf Dassler founded competitor company Puma.
Since the founding of the two businesses, Herzogenaurach’s population has risen from just under 7,000 to 24,000, with residents getting to enjoy the huge tax revenues brought in by the companies, as well as the sponsorship of local sports teams by two of the world’s biggest activewear companies.
The two companies are both still headquartered in the German town, with their offices just 10 minutes away from each other. In contradiction to the HQs' close proximities, the feuding brothers opted to be buried at opposite ends of the town’s cemetery...
Dubbed both "Chocolate Town" and "The Sweetest Place on Earth," the company town of Hershey in Pennsylvania came into being in the early 1900s.
Candy tycoon Milton S. Hershey built his eponymous company's factory and HQ there, as well as homes for his workers. The newly-developed town also featured a school, a community centre, and even a zoo.
The benevolent employer went on to create the Hersheypark theme park and this, along with other Hershey-related spin-offs, continues to be central to the modern-day Hershey's economy.
Back in the 1990s, Round Rock was a little-known city sitting just north of Austin, Texas, with a population of around 31,000.
However, when tech corporation Dell announced in 1994 that Round Rock would be the home of its new HQ, interest in the municipality quickly picked up.
With Dell rapidly making its way to the forefront of computer technology at the turn of the century, the move also enticed other companies to follow suit.
The influx of new workers and their families allowed local business to flourish, and the once sleepy city has given way to a metropolitan microcosm. As of July 2022, Round Rock’s population had swelled to upwards of 125,000 people.
Established in 1936, the gemstone mining town of Oranjemund in Namibia had long been run by diamond-extracting firm Namdeb, a subsidiary of De Beers.
Up until 2012, almost everything in the town of 4,000 residents had been owned and operated by De Beers, from the school to the supermarket.
In the past, employment and settlement in Oranjemund was restricted only to employees of the mining giant but the town officially opened to the public in December 2017, with residents given permission to pursue other industries. Despite this, diamond mining is still expected to be a significant part of Oranjemund's economy.
Founded by Tata Group founder Jamsetji Tata, the Indian city of Jamshedpur – sometimes referred to as "Steel City" – was planned to perfection by the patriarch of the metals company back in the early 20th century.
Tata Steel's HQ and largest plant, as well as a Tata Motors factory and machinery facility, are all located within the thriving city, and the company continues to be its most important employer.
Staying with Tata Steel, the Indian multinational owns and operates the largest steel plant in the UK, which is situated in the Welsh town of Port Talbot.
With a Welsh-based workforce totalling 4,000, the plant is the town's largest employer by a large margin. However, coronavirus put the Port Talbot site at risk, and in July 2020 Tata proposed that the UK government take on a £900 million ($1.1bn) 50% stake to keep the business afloat.
In the end, rescue talks were called off just one month later, with the Treasury concluding that Tata Steel had enough money to weather the storm alone. Two years on, the company is exploring ways to introduce more sustainable technologies for making steel at the Port Talbot site.
Another company town in Wales is Broughton, which is reliant on the Airbus manufacturing plant to fuel its economy.
Dating back to 1939, the factory, which started out producing bombers for the Royal Air Force, employed over 6,000 people to assemble wings for the entire family of Airbus aircraft at its peak. However, when the pandemic hit, staffing levels fell by a third to 4,000.
Having met its production goals in 2021, Airbus has since announced that it will hire another 6,000 workers over the course of 2022, many of whom will end up at the Broughton plant.
The global HQ of Benetton is located in Ponzano Veneto, a commune just outside the city of Treviso in north-western Italy.
The fashion giant is key to the economy of the city and its surrounding area, having opened an art gallery and sports complex there.
It's also sponsored local sports teams in Treviso, including Benetton Rugby and youth basketball team Pallacanestro Treviso, which is nicknamed "Benetton Basket".
Inditex, the firm behind such brands as Zara, Massimo Dutti, and Pull&Bear, has transformed the fortunes of La Coruña in north-western Spain.
Headquartered in the nearby town of Arteixo, the unstoppable retail giant is the largest employer in the region and has been credited with revitalising La Coruña.
A local resident told Business Insider a few years ago that "Inditex is the big company that moves everything here".
State-owned Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB) owns and operates the world's largest iron ore mine in Kiruna, Sweden's northernmost town, which is in the province of Lapland.
The community was founded by the company in 1900 to accommodate employees of the mine, and is still going strong today.
However, decades of mining have caused severe subsidence and the entire town is sinking into the ground. To make matters worse, May 2020 saw the town hit by Sweden's worst earthquake in over a decade, and the mine had to be evacuated.
Plans have been in the works since 2004 for the city to relocate, with one-third of the population – equating to around 6,000 people – to be moved by 2035. This will allow the LKAB mines to continue production and perhaps even expand.
Swiss pharmaceutical and biotech company Lonza opened its principal production facility in Visp back in 1907. Today, the factory is still the town's most important employer, with a workforce of around 4,500 people.
Securing Visp's future, the company has expanded its buildings in recent years, announcing in 2018 the creation of two new departments and adding to the firm's 1.1 million square feet (102,200sqm) biopark.
Subsequent expansions in Visp in 2020 and 2021 were dedicated to projects such as Lonza's work on leukaemia drugs.
The bulk of the working population of Ludwigshafen in western Germany owe their livelihoods to BASF, the largest chemical company in the world.
BASF, which was founded in 1865, has been key to Ludwigshafen's unstoppable growth, not to mention the community's impressive affluence.
Around 39,000 (around one-third) of BASF’s employees work there, while seven of the company's 13 divisions are based there.
The town of North Maryville, Tennessee changed its name to Alcoa in 1919, on account of the aluminium plant opened there by the Pittsburgh-based company of the same name.
While the metal-producing firm has become less important for the town's 10,000 residents over the years, Alcoa still plays a crucial part in its financial success and remains a major source of the Knoxville region's economy.
The leading business and number one employer in the Basque region of Spain, Mondragón is the world's largest worker cooperative and operates across a number of sectors, including manufacturing, finance, and retail.
The company, which is named after the town it's based in, also runs the Eroski chain of supermarkets, which has branches across Spain and southern France.
Mining firm Freeport-McMoRan, which is the world's leading producer of molybdenum and second-biggest copper producer, owns absolutely everything in the Arizona town of Bagdad, including its homes and shopping mall.
The town was built in the late 19th century to house workers from the adjacent mine and today the company's employees still make up the majority of the working population. And Bagdad's footprint continues to expand.
In January 2020, Arizona state sold nearly 17,000 acres (6,880ha) of desert to the firm for around $13.5 million (£11.3m). Freeport-McMoRan reportedly plans to use the land to store waste from the copper mining process.
Scunthorpe, located in North Lincolnshire, England, was built around its namesake steel plant, which has loomed over the community and dominated its economy since the mid-19th century.
British Steel went into liquidation in May 2019 and the fates of around 5,000 British Steel workers, and up to 20,000 jobs in the associated supply chain, were at risk.
Turkish company Ataer Holding was in talks about buying the Scunthorpe plant, which was British Steel's main location.
However, Chinese steelmaker Jingye Group was ultimately successful in acquiring the organisation in 2020, promising £1.2 billion ($1.4bn) of investment into the business once the purchase was complete.
And it seems that British Steel's presence in Scunthorpe is set to continue. This June, it announced that it would be making an £80 million ($95.9m) investment to improve its site in Scunthorpe.
Thanks to its philanthropic namesake boss, the high-end Italian knitwear and accessories company Brunello Cucinelli has worked wonders for regenerating the charming Umbrian hamlet of Solomeo, which is home to the firm's HQ.
The company has taken care of everything from the restoration of the community's church to the revamping of its theatre, as well as founding its very own School of High-Level Contemporary Arts & Crafts.
Russia is renowned for its so-called "monotowns", areas that are centred around just one company and that date back to the Soviet era.
The most famous of the lot is Tolyatti, which was expanded in the late 1960s to serve the HQ of auto manufacturer AvtoVAZ, the maker of the Lada car brand.
The firm is still the largest employer in the city, although it's struggling to source car parts (including airbags and anti-lock brakes) due to sanctions, and has recently been forced to reduce production.
On that note: discover the countries and companies that are still doing business with Russia.