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Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive

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Re: Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive

#41

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

refurb wrote: post #35
comrade1 wrote: post #16

The current narrative in the u.s. press, including the tech press, is that china is somewhat backward and uncompetitive. Some people even still call them communist. When the reality is quite different, with cutting edge research, products, technology coming out every day. There are cities in china you've never even heard of that have populations bigger than most major u.s. cities. In something like 50 years the Chine…

In something like 50 years the Chinese went from a poor 3rd world country to 1st world, China is regarded as 1st world now? My understanding is that the economic advances has been limited to a portion of the population and a big chunk of the population is still quite rural and poor.

That's also true of the US - especially if you include "urban and poor" as well.

Re: Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive

#42

Post by JeremyNT »

davydka wrote: post #9

I feel like the idea of the Chinese "ghost city" is just plain false. You can label any new development this way. A typical housing development could have the title "Crazy Americans Build Ghost Houses". This is just urban planning and development being implemented.

> This is just urban planning and development being implemented.

I feel like this is the origin of it. In the US, we seem to take a much more short term view of "urban planning" - rather than being laid out up front to support high density, cities more typically grow via low density sprawl on demand.

The idea of having a city (or district) constructed from the ground up to efficiently meet the needs of citizens 15 years in the future is alien to most of us. The context in which we typically encounter large groups of vacant buildings and empty streets is one in which something has gone wrong, which I think is why we find the "ghost city" narrative compelling.

Re: Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive

#43

Post by zghst »

Hmmm still doesn't counter the fact that there is overdevelopment in China, just this year CNN ran a story on a ghost district in Tiajin....

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/gallery/china-tianjin-gh...

Also Vice had an episode featuring ghost towns: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/explore-chinese-ghost-towns...

Yes our news media likes to hype up anything China these days. The problem with overdevelopment is not that the cities remain empty, it is the debts that come with them (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-04/china-s-ci...). I can imagine many Chinese cities with flashy buildings are deep in debt, American style.

Re: Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive

#44

Post by refurb »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #41
refurb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In something like 50 years the Chinese went from a poor 3rd world country to 1st world, China is regarded as 1st world now? My understanding is that the economic advances has been limited to a portion of the population and a big chunk of the population is still quite rural and poor.

That's also true of the US - especially if you include "urban and poor" as well.

It's true of the US if you use a very liberal definition of "poor". The gap between the poorest and richest in China is far wider than in the US.

Re: Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive

#45

Post by pjlegato »

cbd1984 wrote: post #22
comrade1 wrote: post #16

The current narrative in the u.s. press, including the tech press, is that china is somewhat backward and uncompetitive. Some people even still call them communist. When the reality is quite different, with cutting edge research, products, technology coming out every day. There are cities in china you've never even heard of that have populations bigger than most major u.s. cities. In something like 50 years the Chine…

> Some people even still call them communist. Such as the PRC government. http://english1.english.gov.cn/links/cpc.htm It's Socialist, too http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/09/09/content... > In something like 50 years the Chinese went from a poor 3rd world country to 1st world, pulling over 500 million people out of poverty and into the middle class. So did the Soviet Union. The thing is, you can only h…

The Soviet Union was, by definition, a "second world" country. First and third world do not mean "rich" and "poor". They refer to political alignment with the United States (first), USSR (second), or unaligned (third world).

Re: Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive

#46

Post by fspeech »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14
sergers wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2013 article... You fall right into the posts topic. Latest maps show beginnings of a bustling city... Wiki show 2m pop. Chinese really believe in build it.. They will come...... Eventually in hordes.

Here is one from yesterday: http://gizmodo.com/4-instant-cities-that-are-still-completel... Quote: >Today, the real-estate situation in Ordos has turned macabre. Video billboards along the city's major roadways display mug shots of fugitive developers who have skipped town, fleeing their debts. There are rumors about the dynamiting of buildings in Kangbashi: about owners of unoccupied apartment towers who hope to cre…

Yeah but if you read on you will find that that piece is actually based on an NYT story: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/ordos-china-to...

The NYT piece itself is much more carefully hedged. The TL;DR by the reporter: "IN SHORT, ORDOS is not empty, but it is odd"

A real estate bust implies that investors lost money but not necessarily a ghost town. Anyway the Ordos story was a lot more market driven than the other ones: for a while when coal price was dear Ordos boasted the highest per capita income in all of China. Also land is a lot cheaper in this unpopulated area.

Re: Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive

#47

Post by seanmcdirmid »

fspeech wrote: post #46
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is one from yesterday: http://gizmodo.com/4-instant-cities-that-are-still-completel... Quote: >Today, the real-estate situation in Ordos has turned macabre. Video billboards along the city's major roadways display mug shots of fugitive developers who have skipped town, fleeing their debts. There are rumors about the dynamiting of buildings in Kangbashi: about owners of unoccupied apartment towers who hope to cre…

Yeah but if you read on you will find that that piece is actually based on an NYT story: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/ordos-china-to... The NYT piece itself is much more carefully hedged. The TL;DR by the reporter: "IN SHORT, ORDOS is not empty, but it is odd" A real estate bust implies that investors lost money but not necessarily a ghost town. Anyway the Ordos story was a lot more market driven tha…

Developers in China that focus on 2nd and 3rd tier cities are doing very poorly right now. The problem is that property became a speculative investment and an inflation hedge, but true demand has yet to materialize. The people who need housing can't afford these apartments, those that can afford them don't need to live there. Ugh.

Re: Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive

#48

Post by cbd1984 »

pjlegato wrote: post #45
cbd1984 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people even still call them communist. Such as the PRC government. http://english1.english.gov.cn/links/cpc.htm It's Socialist, too http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/09/09/content... > In something like 50 years the Chinese went from a poor 3rd world country to 1st world, pulling over 500 million people out of poverty and into the middle class. So did the Soviet Union. The thing is, you can only h…

The Soviet Union was, by definition, a "second world" country. First and third world do not mean "rich" and "poor". They refer to political alignment with the United States (first), USSR (second), or unaligned (third world).

> First and third world do not mean "rich" and "poor".

They do now, in this post-1991 world.

> They refer to political alignment with the United States (first), USSR (second), or unaligned (third world).

So China was Third World in 1990? That's not going to be very defensible, except in terms of the definition you just gave, which lost all relevance in 1991.

My point is, the meanings of the words have changed, and trying to use them in their original sense now is just perverse. The original sense was predicated on a political reality which is now gone.

Re: Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive

#49

Post by fspeech »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #47
fspeech wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but if you read on you will find that that piece is actually based on an NYT story: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/ordos-china-to... The NYT piece itself is much more carefully hedged. The TL;DR by the reporter: "IN SHORT, ORDOS is not empty, but it is odd" A real estate bust implies that investors lost money but not necessarily a ghost town. Anyway the Ordos story was a lot more market driven tha…

Developers in China that focus on 2nd and 3rd tier cities are doing very poorly right now. The problem is that property became a speculative investment and an inflation hedge, but true demand has yet to materialize. The people who need housing can't afford these apartments, those that can afford them don't need to live there. Ugh.

Yeah they need the property tax real bad so at least investors will be incentivized to rent out their property instead of keeping their apartments vacant.

Re: Chinese Ghost Cities That Came Alive

#50

Post by pjlegato »

cbd1984 wrote: post #48
pjlegato wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviet Union was, by definition, a "second world" country. First and third world do not mean "rich" and "poor". They refer to political alignment with the United States (first), USSR (second), or unaligned (third world).

> First and third world do not mean "rich" and "poor". They do now, in this post-1991 world. > They refer to political alignment with the United States (first), USSR (second), or unaligned (third world). So China was Third World in 1990? That's not going to be very defensible, except in terms of the definition you just gave, which lost all relevance in 1991. My point is, the meanings of the words have changed, and tr…

If you mean rich, say rich. If you mean poor, say poor. There are already perfectly good words for those exact concepts, and they're not "first" and "third world". Popular ignorance of the actual meanings of those terms does not change anything.

What is perverse is the widespread abuse of long-established academic terms with precise and well known meanings as co-opted euphemisms because one is too embarassed to simply say "rich" or "poor" when that is what one in fact means.

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