The City of Industry is a 12-square mile suburb of Los Angeles with just 219 residents — but more than 2,500 businesses, providing 80,000 jobs:
It was incorporated on June 18, 1957 to prevent surrounding cities from annexing industrial land for tax revenue.
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The City of Industry has no business taxes and is primarily funded through retail sales tax from shopping centers located within the city limits, and property tax on parcels within the City. The city has the highest property tax rate in Los Angeles County, at 1.92%.
Intriguing.
Naturally, this does not please Victor Valle, professor of ethnic studies at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, whose Genealogies of Power in Southern California describes it as “the gritty crossroads of the global trade revolution that is transforming Southern California factories into warehouses, and adjacent working class communities into economic and environmental sacrifice zones choking on cheap goods and carcinogenic diesel exhaust.”
Does the professor’s opinion suprise anyone? Also this area seems similar to the City of London, although not to the extent where the companies can vote.
Liechtenstein (pop. ~40k) and Luxembourg (pop. ~520k) also have large numbers of people who migrate to the city-states just to work:
“51% of the labor force in Liechtenstein commuted daily from Austria, Switzerland, or Germany (2012)”
“in addition to the figure for domestic labor force, about 150,000 workers commute daily from France, Belgium, and Germany (2013 est.)”