Ghost Cities of China

[Jack]

Over the past three decades, China has been building metropolis sizes cities under a strategic urban development plan. Large gleaming cutting-edge cities with towering modern design skyscrapers, municipal buildings, schools, museums, shopping centers and malls, recreational centers and parks, hospitals, transportation systems, and complete with urban housing developments. Everything a city needs, but the only thing is hardly anyone lives there...yet.

World economist have in the past criticized the Chinese government's urban development efforts, for building cities with no supporting industry or housing demand. Economists have called these cities failed utopias, ghost cities, almost empty with populations of 20% or less than their potential. The economist may be wrong, because they viewed China to have a failed vision of 'build it and they will come' when China's vision is closer to 'build it and then move them there' and these city populations are consistently growing as the giant awakens and ghost cities come to life.

By the end of 2015, 56% of China's total population were living in urban areas, compared to 26% in 1990, as the government demolishes rural villages and builds new cities to relocate them. China is reported to have been building 12-24 cities per year. From 2010-2025, it's estimated China will urbanize 300 million people currently living in rural areas, resulting in 70% of the total population living in cities by 2025. This ultimately results in a quick 40 year plan, which molds a new form of culture for the young generation of China, while transforming a nation into an urban powerhouse.


Yujiapu Financial District is a skyscraper development in China's Tianjin Binhai New Area currently being built as a potential center of world finance.




Ordos is one of the twelve major subdivisions of Inner Mongolia, China.


Chenggong District is a city district under the jurisdiction of Kunming, Yunnan, China.



Dantu District is one of three districts of Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province, China.



Nanhui New City is a planned city located in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai, China. It was formerly called Lingang New City until renamed in April 2012. Construction began in 2003 and is scheduled to be completed in 2020

[Icequeen]

I was just recently googling about this.

I thought..."wow, cities I wouldn't mind seeing."

Would love to walk through them. China should start a tourist trade from them..."Empty city vacation get-away for the serious introvert."

I'd sign up.

[Fun With Matches]

^ Really? I think most of them look hideous.

[Icequeen]

^ Really? I think most of them look hideous.

I think all cities are hideous really.

But these are...empty cities.

There lies the attraction...for me anyways.

[Fun With Matches]

^ Really? I think most of them look hideous.

I think all cities are hideous really.

But these are...empty cities.

There lies the attraction...for me anyways.

Yeh, I wouldn't mind a whole towerblock to myself. 

[Icequeen]

*packs bike, skateboard, camera, crash helmet, band-aids...*

 

[odeon]

Wow. Just... wow.

[Icequeen]

Wow. Just... wow.

You want to go too...just admit it. 

[Jack]

I was just recently googling about this.

I thought..."wow, cities I wouldn't mind seeing."

Would love to walk through them. China should start a tourist trade from them..."Empty city vacation get-away for the serious introvert."

I'd sign up.

Last night was one of those no-sleep nights, so spent it reading of China's plans as leaders of the new world order. Am remembering reading/hearing about failed empty cities in China probably ten years ago. They've had more success over the last decade in filling urban developments, by downscaling to developing smaller cities, and creating new districts of existing ones. Some places can be visited by tourists. Ordos in particular is one and probably the largest long-term construction which has been the slowest to fill. Ordos is probably the city with the most photos available online, as many journalists have visited over the last ten years. It's said to be a surreal experience, and would have to agree it probably is. Wouldn't mind seeing it too.

[Jack]

Might fixate on this for a few days.

Yingkou  is a prefecture-level city of Liaoning province, People's Republic of China. It is a port city of the Bohai Sea, and is the location of the mouth of the Liao River. The city has a total area of 4,970 square kilometres, and a population of 2,428,534 at the 2010 census whom 1,340,993 in the built up area made of 3 urban districts (Zhanqian, Xishi and Laobian) and Dashiqiao City now linked to the urban core. Yingkou city is currently undergoing substantial expansion. Phase One of the Coastal Base project is complete, adding a further 44 km2 (17 sq mi) of industrial and urban areas to Yingkou. Phase Two, which began in 2010 will add a further massive 157 km2 (61 sq mi).

[Parts]

^ Really? I think most of them look hideous.

I think all cities are hideous really.

But these are...empty cities.

There lies the attraction...for me anyways.

That's what I like about them also,  I would never want to go to them if they were fully populated.   I wonder what they will look like in twenty years with the way they seem to cut corners on things

[Pyraxis]

Not to mention the infrastructure would be 20 years out of date by the time anyone was moving into it. How can they even know the requirements?

[Jack]

Not to mention the infrastructure would be 20 years out of date by the time anyone was moving into it. How can they even know the requirements?

China does a pretty good job of staying out of the world view. China has built hundreds of new city districts and moved a third of their population from rural to urban in only five years; that's 400 million people in five years, so the idea they can reach the goal of building new cities for another 300 million over the next ten years seem plausible. For all anyone knows, the half dozen empty ones that make the news are left empty and open to the public eye on purpose so the world will report them and consider it wasteful and fruitless what China is doing.

[Jack]

The way China builds an initial population in its new cities is simple: it makes people move into them. So when a municipality decides to flip on the switch of one of its large new cities or districts — like Shanghai’s Pudong, Zhengzhou’s Zhengdong, or Guangzhou's Zhujiang — the wheels start moving: government headquarters, the offices of banks and state-owned enterprises, and university campuses are shipped in, subsidies and tax breaks are given to private companies to relocate, and everyone who is associated with these entities are compelled to follow along.

Universities, especially, are a major tool to break the inertia of stagnant new urban developments in China. Often built into the master plans of many of the country’s large new areas are massive university towns, where more than a dozen new campuses can be built side by side that will bring in, literally, hundreds of thousands of students and staff. The idea is that seeding a developing area with a fledgling population base can initiate the beginnings of a local business ecosystem, which will then make the place more attractive to prospective home buyers and residents, which will then attract even more businesses.

China's students are essentially turned into troops of urbanization as they are sent off to the front lines of their country’s urban frontiers. The effect is that for a good span of the ghost city phase China's under-inhabited new cityscapes are transformed into epicenters of youth.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/01/19/one-way-that-china-populates-its-ghost-cities/#4e2f55865622

[Jack]

I wonder what they will look like in twenty years with the way they seem to cut corners on things

That's a good question; saw a couple of mentions of cheaply constructed buildings but nothing highly notable. However China already had problems with deteriorated housing in existing urban areas, and addressing that is also part of their progress. They have an initiative within the United Nations of better housing for all, and the urban development drive has greatly improved statistics for their quality of living conditions. It's actually very smart. Back in the mid to late 80's the UN passed a set of basic human rights which were to apply to the citizenship of all member countries and some countries had to change their ways in order to comply; it's the reason the US cracked down hard on businesses paying non-citizen below minimum wage and began allowing companies to easily gain work permits for undocumented employees. Part of the UN human rights initiative also included the right to own property. While China has no privately owned land, urban planning has been opened to private developers, and the people living in urban areas either buy or rent from those private owners, so China has quickly evolved from a state owned country into one which the majority of homes are now privately owned.