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I wonder if sooner rather than later, those ghost cities might actually fill up once they bottom out and become affordable like how bad parts of SF or Oakland o
by nosuchthing 12y ago
I wonder if sooner rather than later, those ghost cities might actually fill up once they bottom out and become affordable like how bad parts of SF or Oakland or NYC used to be cheap?
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoOrdos is in the middle of the Gobi. Build a ghost city in the middle of say Arizona, why would they come?
- refurb 12y agoWhen you need a permit to move to a city and you can't get one for Beijing, the middle of Gobi doesn't seem like a bad option.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoMoving to a city doesn't majically get you a job and livelihood. There is already plenty of depopulated country side with plenty of livable space, people go where the actual jobs are. Edit: looks like things have gotten worse for Ordos: http://gizmodo.com/4-instant-cities-that-are-still-completely-empty-1693270774 http://gizmodo.com/4-instant-cities-that-are-still-completel...
- refurb 12y agoTrue, but my point was that in China the government exerts a lot more control on where people can go. Wouldn't surprise me that the Chinese gov't could fill an empty city if they wanted to.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoI don't think that is true. Sure, there is the hukou system, but migrant workers have been free to move around since the 90s, and they do. If you handed out hukous in 3rd tier economically depressed new cities, I'm not sure if there would be many takers. And the properties in Kangbashi are all fairly high end anyways, the city hukou-deprived migrant workers probably wouldn't even be welcomed. China builds a lot of subsidized public housing on the city outskirts of major cities, but no one wants to live there because transportation is bad to where the jobs are.