There was a lot of that kind of thing in the 19th century, although the exact financial arrangement among the settlers differed from place to place. They didn’t always have a promoter, for example. But the US ran out of unsettled areas of fertile farmland of sufficient size to do that about 1910. And even earlier, say around 1890, there wasn’t that much left in most states. So later immigrants mostly settled in cities.
From what I could tell from what I read about Slovaks in Cleveland, people had to come to big cities to work and no one was getting rich (the previous European immigrants were the ones who had established themselves as business owners). The extra money they had went back home to Europe, and to building local churches and community centers. During WWI and WWII money was sent to organizations trying to help their countrymen dealing with war. I saw no indication in the books I’ve read that anyone had any money to pool together to not only buy land but to also build houses and businesses and provide services such as utilities and safety forces. They struggled to just build and maintain their own churches in the city.
I’ve heard of a Chinatown in San Francisco but I’ve no idea if it’s for real or not.* Is that what you mean? I wonder if there are more Chinatowns… like maybe in LA or NYC?
.
*c’mon… YOU know…
Chinatown actually predates the official establishment of San Francisco by about two years. There’s also a much smaller Japantown.
Wikipedia has a list.
I know, I live in SF. Sorry about my lame kidding around.
That was mainly for the benefit of @Mesquite-oh. 