[kennystone]

George Pullman made a town outside of Chicago for workers to build his railcars. It didn't end well:

"the town and its design were... a paternalistic system that took away men's rights as citizens, including the right to control their own domestic environment"

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1030.html

Happy that google is making this investment; it's worth a shot even if it is far the ideal way to build housing. Hopefully the NIMBYism that defines this area won't kill it.

[pessimizer]

It ended perfectly well for the person who built it. The object wasn't to make the workers happy, the object was to make Pullman money.