But the recent data gathered by Baidu suggests that it is slowly filling up with residents. Zhengdong, a new district of the provincial capital city of Zhengzhou, was often reported on as one of the biggest Chinese ghost cities, housing rings of empty skyscrapers and encompassing a whopping 150 square kilometers. Sometimes, this assumption seems to prove true. Massive stretches are built, and it is assumed that the future growth and prosperity will somehow fill the space up." For this purpose, "cities and extensions get built purely based on speculation, but not on direct demand. The Chinese government intends to move 100 million people from the rural areas into cities by 2020. "It was and is a gigantic, unique experiment," Eduard Kögel, urban planner and expert on Chinese cities, told DW. Although trade was down, strong consumer spending helped stabilize the figures. China is often cited as having used within just three years the amount of concrete the US did in the entire 20th century.Īccording to new data, China's economy performed largely as expected in the last quarter, showing steady economic growth at 6.7 percent.
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With unprecedented speed, residential apartments and office spaces were built up around hubs - or near smaller cities that were supposed to become hubs. "The original idea of these satellite cities was to decrease population pressure on the old city centers," Xie explains. Carlby Xie, Senior Director of Colliers International China, told DW that "investors and the government alike are concerned about how slowly the real estate in these cities is selling." On the commercial side, office spaces even in high-profile second-tier cities like Xi'an and Chengdu are experiencing spiking vacancy rates of 40 to 50 percent.
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Mostly these are additions to existing cities, making them rather ghost towns than ghost cities," says Wu. "Second-tier cities like Chengdu or Harbin do have residential areas that are under occupied. China's most famous ghost city Ordos, in Inner Mongolia, is a new addition to the existing city, called Kangbashi, supposed to house one million peopleįirst-tier cities are economic hubs like Beijing and Shanghai, whilst second and third-tier cities are often provincial capitals.