Photographs Of The “Surreal, Uncanny” Emptiness Of China’s Ghost Cities

Be prepared for the next great transfer of wealth. Buy physical silver and storable food.

zerohedge.com / by Tyler Durden on 02/19/2016 22:00

When one week ago we presented the latest Chinese ghost city being built on the edge of Nanning, immediately thousands of readers flocked to observe its sterile, pointless, yet very curious existence. The reason, perhaps, is that there is something oddly morbid, grotesque and yet fascinating about the clinical emptiness of China’s relentless attempts to artificially boost its GDP by creating “larger than life” Lego sets meant for human existence, yet which remain devoid of virtually any civilization.

That is what drew Chicago photographer Kai Caemmerer to them.

Take the Kangbashi District of Ordos, China is a marvel of urban planning, 137-square miles of shining towers, futuristic architecture and pristine parks carved out of the grassland of Inner Mongolia. It is a thoroughly modern city, but for one thing: No one lives there. Kai Caemmerer visited Kangbashi and two other cities for his ongoing series Unborn Cities. According to Wired, the photos capture the eerie sensation of standing on a silent street surrounded by empty skyscrapers and public spaces devoid of life. “These cities felt slightly surreal and almost uncanny,” Caemmerer says, “which I think is a product of both the newness of these places and the relative lack of people within them.”

It is well-known that China has built hundreds of new cities over the last three decades as it reshapes itself into an urbanized nation with a plan to move 250 million rural inhabitants—more than six times the population of California—into cities by 2026. The newly minted cities help showcase the political accomplishments of local government officials, who reason that real estate and urban development is a safe, high-return investment that can help fuel economic growth.

The problem is that this attempt at recreating SimCity in the real world never works: most people don’t want to live somewhere that feels dead, and these new cities sometimes lack the jobs and commerce needed to support those who would live there. In Kangbashi, the government used some administrative tricks to address this, relocating bureaucratic buildings and schools, then trying to convince people in surrounding villages to move in. It had minor success. Today, a city designed for at least 500,000 has around 100,000 inhabitants.

Others are less lucky.

READ MORE

The post Photographs Of The “Surreal, Uncanny” Emptiness Of China’s Ghost Cities appeared first on Silver For The People.

Thanks to BrotherJohnF