[Broadjumper]

China's building boom has created a ton of abandoned cities and massive ruins — most of which are brand new, and have never had people living in them. Here are the deserted Chinese cities, mostly built in the last 10 years, which could be sets for your next dystopian movie.

Kangbashi New Area, a district of Ordos, Inner Mongolia, Northern China

In 2003, Ordos officials started the planning a new 1 million person city district. Thanks to a $161 billion investment in 2010, the "Dubai of Northern China" has the capacity for 300,000 people — but only 20,000-30,000 residents. It isn't a ghost town due to economic issues — the government simply can't convince people to move there.

[Broadjumper]

Kangbashi New Area

[Faline]

Waste of money.

[kellyhound]

nice movie decor though and great facility for training of police, swat teams, military etc.

[Shakey]

[Arkoquisa]

In tens of thousands of years when archeologists uncover all these vacant cities in china, they will estimate their population in severely inflated numbers. Must be crazy to walk around in the buildings.

[Nick_ufc]

waste of time AND money

[Jackal]

I love ghost cities. Wish I could live in one!

[Zambini]

These ghost towns are kind of a misnomer, they are being built because China's current cities have horrible water and sanitation issues, most municipal waste water systems can only treat about 52% of the waste the test goes untreated! into the river, for example.

Many homes do not have running water or toilet facilities, they use a common bath house like at a campground...

These old cities have horrible pollution and infrastructure, not worth trying to renovate, a few historical neighborhoods are being preserved as tourist destinations

China has jumped a generation ahead, many areas are like the USA was on the late 1800's, outhouses and wells/ rivers.

The plan is to move those residents into the new cities and tear down the old ones, but Chinese tradition and everyone's normal desire to stay in the same neighborhood with friends and family gives some resistance to that idea, but I have no doubt these cities will fill up, I've seen them first hand several times...

It is also seen as an tangible investment, as compared to the intangible magic of the stock market most of us invest in

[danonolan]

Kangbashi is actually in the process of being populated. If you go to many areas, they look like any normal city. People, strangely enough, are just taking a little while to move in, though it's definitely happening.