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Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014)
11–20 of 54 posts
Re: Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014)
#12While watching that let's not forget that at least in Europe we also have "ghost cities".
Re: Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014)
#13There have been other stories of "ghost towns" which eventually filled up with people. Perhaps this is just one of those. I always find it fascinating but I also note that a major disaster in a city like Beijing and there is already a bunch of places to house people post disaster. I don't know if anyone else thinks about it in that way but from a civil defense perspective it seems interesting to have "back up" cities waiting.
For other Person of Interest fans I found that Ordos was a ghost town interesting from that aspect of things as well.
Re: Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014)
#14"The man led us through a courtyard, around the back of the school buildings, and suddenly there it was: the yard opened up into a wide, grassy playing field, flanked on one side by raised seating. On the edge of the grass pitch – regularly mowed, yet never used – we were pointed towards a series of bronze statues. The figures showed children in traditional Chinese dress, frozen in play as the pink silk scarves tied…
Not to mention the draw on electricity, which probably points back to some undisclosed amount of coal being burned in a power plant, somewhere nearby...
Re: Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014)
#15It may seem weird to have almost-empty cities, but from a different perspective, a city like that is an amazing resource. If China ever has disaster or other crisis that creates lots of refugees (think Hurricane Katrina), they have a functioning city with lots of space ready for people to go to. Which is pretty awesome, when you think about it.
Re: Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014)
#16"Typical housing prices in Kangbashi have fallen from $1,100 to $470 per square foot, over the last five years alone."
Why are the prices so high?
Obviously nobody wants to pay $500k - $1 million for a 1,000 sqft. apartment in a Chinese ghost town.
Re: Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014)
#17It may seem weird to have almost-empty cities, but from a different perspective, a city like that is an amazing resource. If China ever has disaster or other crisis that creates lots of refugees (think Hurricane Katrina), they have a functioning city with lots of space ready for people to go to. Which is pretty awesome, when you think about it.
But these don't really make very good "backup" cities. The housing isn't owned by the government. It's owned by investors, often individuals, and it serves as a sink for money that has nowhere else to go. Real estate and construction investment of this kind is one of the big drivers of the Chinese economy. If the government confiscates property on the scale you're talking about -- even if it's in response to a disaster -- the bottom would drop out of their financial markets. Ain't gonna happen, even in a disaster.
Re: Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014)
#18There have been other stories of "ghost towns" which eventually filled up with people. Perhaps this is just one of those. I always find it fascinating but I also note that a major disaster in a city like Beijing and there is already a bunch of places to house people post disaster. I don't know if anyone else thinks about it in that way but from a civil defense perspective it seems interesting to have "back up" cities…
It only makes sense if the backup cities are already owned by the government. If populating those cities post-disaster requires government appropriation of an entire city's worth of private real estate assets, the resulting financial and political instability could well dwarf anything wrought by the original disaster.
Re: Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014)
#19"Typical housing prices in Kangbashi have fallen from $1,100 to $470 per square foot, over the last five years alone." Why are the prices so high? Obviously nobody wants to pay $500k - $1 million for a 1,000 sqft. apartment in a Chinese ghost town.
That does seem insanely expensive. Maybe the price was quoted in $/m^2 and the unit was mistakenly switched to square feet at some point?
An alternative explanation is that the owners of these houses don't really want to sell them at all for some reason. Maybe keeping the money tied in unsold real estate is somehow preferable to having cash or other assets, due to e.g. government housing subsidies or something?
Re: Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014)
#20There have been other stories of "ghost towns" which eventually filled up with people. Perhaps this is just one of those. I always find it fascinating but I also note that a major disaster in a city like Beijing and there is already a bunch of places to house people post disaster. I don't know if anyone else thinks about it in that way but from a civil defense perspective it seems interesting to have "back up" cities…
It only makes sense if the backup cities are already owned by the government. If populating those cities post-disaster requires government appropriation of an entire city's worth of private real estate assets, the resulting financial and political instability could well dwarf anything wrought by the original disaster.
So you think that the appropriation of unused real estate is worse than whatever disaster led to the mass exodus of a population from a major city. Interesting, but that is not how I think.