Company communities

Amazon’s corporate communities raise questions about life versus work

COMMENTARY BY JULIA VOLMAN, STAFF WRITER

S THE American housing crisis becomes more severe, efforts are being made by corporations to combat the cost of living. However, some are using this hardship as a facade to hide their true, selfsh intentions. The multibillion- dollar corporation Amazon plans to build transportation-oriented developments in Arlington, Nashville and the Puget Sound, all of which are locations of Amazon Headquarters. These communities are being built to house employees closer to each other and their place of work, making production effcient but turning the quality of life for these employees into a dystopian reality that is more robot than human.

The disastrous disadvantages of Amazon’s working and living communities are vast, but most prominent is the unhealthy dehumanization of the Amazon Employees that this initiative will make a reality. Though promoted as an improvement to the way we integrate work and personal lives, this 21stcentury development feels all too familiar. Daily life for Amazon team members will be reduced to a monotonous work, home, sleep, repeat schedule that eerily refects the deplorable working conditions of the 18th century Industrial Revolution.

“If I lived in a community of solely Gables students and staff, I would feel controlled and stripped of my freedom. Nobody should have to live in those conditions,” sophomore Naomi Galex said.

The convenience these residential areas will provide is far more harmful than benefcial, as the extremely close proximity destroys a healthy boundary between personal and work hours and spaces for many