Ghost City world tour? Thought you might enjoy this one. Apparently, the Chinese aren't just building ghost towns within their own nation, but have expanded the whole business to Africa as well.
The BBC reports:
A giant new Chinese-built city has sprung up on the outskirts of Angola's capital Luanda.
Nova Cidade de Kilamba is a brand-new mixed residential development of 750 eight-storey apartment buildings, a dozen schools and more than 100 retail units.
Designed to house up to half a million people when complete, Kilamba has been built by the state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) in under three years at a reported cost of $3.5bn (£2.2bn).
But on a recent trip back to Luanda, the BBC's former Angola correspondent Louise Redvers discovered that most of the buildings currently lie empty, as this footage she recorded shows.Ghost town video, here.
The mixed Chinese economy with pockets of free market activity, but with significant centrally planned activity, is setting up for a major fall. The capital spent in China on centrally planned wasteful projects appears massive in size. As the capital runs out, and at the same time the central bank slows money printing (because of fears of igniting hyper-inflation), the Chinese crash will be heard around the world.
As an architect who works for a firm that master plans traditional neighborhood developments, I am appalled at the dehumanizing effigy to construction efficiency built by these central planners who are evidently stuck in a 20th century internationalist era. The most planners should do is create a framework and few guidelines then let creativity and chaos loose to create livable human places.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they are just waiting for immigration papers to clear before filling it up ?
ReplyDeletebillion here a billion there is nothing compared to over a trillion in reserves
ReplyDeletethe first thing that i thought when i read about these the past couple years was these empty cities are for after the coming "war"
ReplyDeleteattacks typically will be focused on population centers and active cities, destroying them completely with the ability of the bombs compared to the 1940's - nobody would likely target empty desert, barren mountains or other low population targets - so these cities are built and ready to move any survivors into.
governments are busy building underground bunkers to take care of themselves, so why not a few cities for whoever survives after it is all over...
why else would china be building so many empty ones? they will have a lot of displaced people to take care of.
crazy thoughts yeah, but i've been amazed myself at some of the crazy thoughts the past few years that have turned out to be unfortunately accurate.