Surreal photos of China's failed 'city of the future' (2024)

FAQs

Do ghost cities still exist in China? ›

The phrase “ghost city” might imply a city once full of life and now abandoned. But China's ghost cities are brand new, and their high-rises never populated. Many had remained that way for years, byproducts of rapid economic growth that continue to plague the nation's urban planning strategy.

Ghost Cities are vacant neighborhoods and sometimes whole cities that were built but were never inhabited. Their existence is a physical manifestation of Chinese overdevelopment in real estate and the dependence on housing as an investment strategy.

Ordos Kangbashi is often seen as one of the first and most prominent examples of the international Chinese ghost city phenomenon and fascination. Some journalists have pointed to the Ordos Kangbashi ghost city stories as an example of media hastily and often misinformed reporting of developments in China.

There are currently as many as 50 ghost cities and 64 million empty apartments across the country. Building a city sounds easy after looking at the pictures of tall apartments, commercial buildings and modern architecture.

As The New York Times reported, some 3,800 ghost towns exist in America, mostly abandoned between the 19th and 20th centuries for greener pastures and big city dreams.

Hashima Island, Japan, was once a bustling community.

Developed initially as a residence for people working in the undersea coal mines in 1887, Hashima Island quickly expanded into an island of concrete high-rise buildings housing over 5,000 people.

Today, the Forbidden City is home to the Palace Museum. It houses over one million rare Chinese artworks and artifacts. Most of these come from the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Location. The tunnels of the Underground City run beneath Beijing's city center, covering an area of 85 square kilometres (33 sq mi) 8 to 18 metres (26–59 ft) under the surface. At one time there were about 90 entrances to the complex, all of which were hidden in shops along the main streets of Qianmen.

Pennsylvania. Indiana County contains the most, with 36. There are 71 ghost towns within 50 miles of Pittsburgh.

Where is the largest ghost town in the United States? ›

Welcome to Jerome, Arizona, America's largest ghost town.

Factors leading to the abandonment of towns include depleted natural resources, economic activity shifting elsewhere, railroads and roads bypassing or no longer accessing the town, human intervention, disasters, massacres, wars, and the shifting of politics or fall of empires.

It was so named because access to the area was barred to most of the subjects of the realm. Government functionaries and even the imperial family were permitted only limited access; the emperor alone could enter any section at will.

Because access was restricted to the imperial family and to those who had business with them, it came to be known as the Forbidden City. Learn more about the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) on the Asian Art Museum's education website.

Raised some 100 feet above the central great courtyard, the Forbidden City's grandest structure houses only the Dragon Throne, ceremonial seat of the Ming and Qing emperors' imperial power for five centuries.

Abandoned Picher, Oklahoma: The Most Toxic Town in America.

'The Most Toxic Town in America'

The town of Picher, Okla became an incorporated community in 1920, with a population of 9,726. The town was built around lead and zinc mining. In fact, Picher mine shafts produced over half of the lead used to make bullets fired during World War I.

Are ghost towns safe? Ghost towns that are preserved and operated by the state park or national park system are generally safe to visit.

Due to a lack of roads, trails, and water, very few people venture into this area. Beveridge, a gold mining town that never had roads to it, boomed in the late 1800s and then shrank and was abandoned in the early 1900s as its only water source dried up.

Pripyat, Ukraine

The city lies in the inner exclusion zone around Chernobyl where hot spots of persistently high levels of radiation make the area uninhabitable for thousands of years to come.

Can people live in ghost towns? ›

There are thousands of abandoned hamlets in the U.S. Some people still live and vacation in them. Maybe you want to, too? There are some 3,800 ghost towns in the United States, most abandoned in the 19th and early 20th centuries in favor of bigger cities, or casualties of changing industry.

Entry to the Forbidden City for tourists is only through the south gate (Meridian Gate) - tickets and audio guides are sold on the square before this gate. The number of daily visitors is restricted to 80,000 and since tickets are sold online you should go there really early if you want to buy your ticket there.

Who lives in the Forbidden City now? No-one: it is no longer accommodation for anyone, royal or otherwise. The Forbidden City used to be the residence of emperors. After the last emperor of China left the palace in 1925, it became a museum open to the public.

It is said that there are totally 9,999 and a half rooms in the Forbidden City because only the God of Heaven could be entitled to 10,000 rooms. Emperor Chengzu, who built the Forbidden City, declared himself the son of the God of Heaven, thus defining the smaller size of his palace.

Cappadocia city, located in central Turkey, is home to no less than 36 underground cities, and at a depth of approx. 85 m, Derinkuyu is the deepest.

Shī Chéng (Chinese: 狮城, literally 'Lion City') is an ancient underwater city situated under Qiandao Lake in the Zhejiang Province of China. The city was flooded for the purpose of Industrialization by the Chinese Government in the year 1959 after a hydroelectric dam was required for the province of Zhejiang.

Shi Cheng, Chun'an County, Zhejiang, China.

An ancient city, established about 1300 years ago, now lies at the 26-40 m depth underwater. The city and the valley were deliberately flooded in 1959 in order to create an artificial lake and hydroelectric power station. Now it could be a unique paradise for divers.

The Forbidden City was the political and ritual center of China for over 500 years. After its completion in 1420, the Forbidden City was home to 24 emperors, their families and servants during the Ming (1368–1644) and the Qing (1644–1911) dynasties.

Turkey. Cappadocia contains several historical underground cities carved out of unusual geological formations formed via the eruptions of ancient volcanoes. The cities were initially inhabited by the Hittites, then later by early Christians as hiding places.

The Window of the World theme park packs 130 world wonders into just 118-acres in western Shenzhen, located in China's Pearl River Delta, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world.

What is the newest ghost town in the United States? ›

Eagle Mountain is among the America's best preserved ghost towns, mostly due to the fact that it's one of the newest. In the shadows of Joshua Tree in in Riverside County, the town was founded in 1948 by Henry J. Kaiser, a.k.a, the father of modern American shipbuilding.

Just west of the Florida Turnpike is a ghost town named Fort Drum. During the Second Seminole War this area housed a fort, and the town was settled after the Civil War by people looking for jobs in the cattle business.

Scarfolk is a fictional northwestern English town created by writer and designer Richard Littler, who is sometimes identified as the town mayor, L. Ritter. It is trapped in a time loop set in the 1970s, and its culture, parodying that of Britain at the time, features elements of the absurd and the macabre.

Eagle Mountain, is a ghost town in the California desert in Riverside County founded in 1948 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser.

The city of Pripyat, in northern Ukraine, was evacuated after the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 and despite once being home to nearly 50,000 people, has never been inhabited since.

With 511 ghost towns, Texas has the most out of any state, according to Geotab, a GPS hardware company. The company compiled a list of over 3,800 ghost towns, creating an interactive map that showcases the “Ghost Towns of America.” Many ghost towns date to the 1800s, an era of industrialization and westward expansion.

Because of California's Gold Rush history, there are as many as 300 ghost towns in the state. Miners abandoned many of them after the mines became unprofitable.

Centralia, Pa.

Located in covered bridge-heavy Columbia County in northeastern Pennsylvania, the borough of Centralia is without a doubt North America's most notorious modern near ghost town. That's right, near ghost town.

How many abandoned houses are in China? ›

Capital Economics, a research and consultancy firm based in London, would put the number far higher still. It estimated last year that mainland China was host to about 30 million unsold properties, while about 100 million more were likely to have been bought but not occupied.

Shī Chéng (Chinese: 狮城, literally 'Lion City') is an ancient underwater city situated under Qiandao Lake in the Zhejiang Province of China. The city was flooded for the purpose of Industrialization by the Chinese Government in the year 1959 after a hydroelectric dam was required for the province of Zhejiang.

Entry to the Forbidden City for tourists is only through the south gate (Meridian Gate) - tickets and audio guides are sold on the square before this gate. The number of daily visitors is restricted to 80,000 and since tickets are sold online you should go there really early if you want to buy your ticket there.

The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987. The complex consists of 980 buildings, encompassing 9,999 rooms and covering 720,000 m² (72 ha)/178 acres.

Pennsylvania. Indiana County contains the most, with 36. There are 71 ghost towns within 50 miles of Pittsburgh.

How have Chinese and Canadian investments developed over time? The share of Chinese investors in the U.S. real estate market remained somewhat constant until 2018 when it hovered at around 15 percent, before dropping to 11 percent in 2019 and then six percent in 2021.

Because China is a socialist country, all land is either subject to government ownership or collective ownership. In principle, municipal land is subject to government ownership and land outside cities is subject to collective ownership. However, one can obtain the right to use the land.

More than 1,000 years ago, Native Americans began migrating to the area that was to become Lake Mead. A native culture developed and flourished in the Moapa Valley of Southern Nevada.

The handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China was at midnight on 1 July 1997. This event ended 156 years of British rule in the former colony.