How much property do the megacorps own?, Inside of cities, I mean. Options

[Agent 333]

I was just wondering, how much is a reasonable amout of a city for a megacorp to own? A block? Ten blocks? Specifically, I'm running a game set in Boston, and I was wondering how much property each of the Big 10 is likely to have. Sure, NeoNET probably has more than any other corp in the area, but how much more? Is it reasonable to assume that Shiawase has a building? A whole professional park? What about AA megacorps like Universal Omnitech? Do they own a skyscraper or just rent the top 8 floors? Any info (and I mean info not redirects to books that are out of print or out of my budget) would be helpful. Thanks!

[TBRMInsanity]

I would expect each megacorp (with maybe the exception of Aztechnology) to have at least one office building per major city. On top A corps may have 1-5 stores around any major city, AA corps have around 3-9 stores, and AAA would have one store per city district. Corps with a major presence in a city (like NeoNET in Boston) would have a store on almost every block (maybe one every 2-4 blocks from each other), plus additional office buildings in each district, and maybe 2-3 facilities in the outlaying area around the city.

[nezumi]

1) Corporations have as much space as is required by your story (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Given that, I would assume that most MAJOR metropolitan areas will have buildings dedicated specifically to more or less half of the megacorps. There are generally around 7-8 megas, depending on your edition. Seattle I believe has dedicated buildings to around 3-6 of them at any given time.

Megacorporations do the vast majority of their work through subsidiary holdings, which is where most of their buildings and land will be held. Yamatetsu may not have a building in Boston that says "Yamatetsu", but they may own "Happy Lucky Insurance Company", which has its own high-rise in downtown Boston, as well as a pair of car facilities out the outskirts, fifty or sixty buildings dedicated to assorted offices, production spaces, meeting spaces, etc., zillions of storefronts for their different minor restaurants, shops and such, plus land held that is rented out to other companies, and scads of rented out office space for their low-level things like bean-counting, travel agents and so on.

I've never seen concrete numbers on what percentage of all business is owned by a megacorp. I'd guess right aroudn 40-50% of all businesses are somehow majority-owned by a megacorporation, and so about 40-50% (probably a little more) of all business space is held or owned by a megacorporation, out of which a hair's breadth is actually clearly labeled with that megacorp's name on the front door.

Given the breadth of business the megacorps do, all of them will have dedicated office space somewhere in just about every metropolitan area (Aztechnology is included in this. Who do you think manages all of the Stuffer Shacks?) In many cases it'll be 8 floors rented out of someone else's building, nothing special. In some cases they'll go through the work of building a nice building. You can expect arcologies to be limited to points of major corporate interest (so the Renraku Arcology is there because Seattle is the home base for basically all of Renraku's western-UCAS holdings.

[TBRMInsanity]

1) Corporations have as much space as is required by your story (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Good advice.

[the_real_elwood]

For the city that is a megacorp's corporate HQ, I would say that their main office building/complex where the C-level execs work could easily be about 0.05-0.1 square miles of actual office space, but you have to remember that it doesn't have to be all on one level for an office building. Then you've got parking and green space and security areas and whatever, so maybe ground area would be around 200-300 acres. If you get to manufacturing facilities, they tend to be much more spread out and are usually only built on one level (maybe 2 or 3, if you're making something sufficiently small). Total property owned by a megacorp in their home city could be as high as 10-15 square miles depending on what facilities they have there. Just remember, all that area isn't going to be contiguous. For NeoNET in Boston, their corporate HQ is likely an office building in downtown, but that'd probably only be one or two square city blocks. Other facilities are probably going to be out in the sprawl, where land isn't at such a premium. For a city that's the headquarters for a regional branch, halve all those numbers. For any other city, it'd probably just have a small regional office, something like a 5-10 story building big enough for a couple hundred workers.

[Pendaric]

Lots.

Trite but I just had to. What nezumi said.

[Backgammon]

Then there's Manhattan where it's ALL corporate property.