Abstract
One of the side-effects generated by mainland China’s urbanization process is “ghost cities”—generally defined as clusters of abandoned buildings or housing structures—but there is a notable lack of studies on the basic characteristics related to this phenomenon, such as size, growth, level, distribution, scale, intensity, pattern and determinants. Through a combination of nighttime satellite data and daytime satellite data as a useful proxy, in this paper, we present the spatial pattern and temporal evolution of China’s ghost cities over the last two decades. Nighttime light’s rate of change in newly built areas is developed based on DMSP/OLS and Normalized Difference Built-up Index to assess a city’s darkness. Results show that the ghost city problem is real, but, at least so far, confined to 22 smaller cities. However, further analysis reveals that nighttime lights change in newly built areas, following an inverted U-curve for big cities representing a reversion from positive to negative values for the trends in recent years. The methodology through the use of the complementary characteristics in time between DMSP/OLS and Landsat data in our study prove to serve as deposing the direct evidences to ascertain and quantify such social-economic phenomenon.
Highlights
Urbanization in China is of particular interest both because of the large numbers involved and because of the pace of its progress in the urban population, urban settlements and urban area
Ho is rejected, or it is accepted that a change of the nighttime light rate of change in a newly built area has occurred over time
As Chinese cities pursue economic growth through urbanization and implement ambitious land development projects, some of them have inadvertently turned themselves into ghost cities
Summary
Urbanization in China is of particular interest both because of the large numbers involved and because of the pace of its progress in the urban population, urban settlements and urban area. In 1978, about 195 million Chinese lived in cities; today that number approaches 700 million, with the number of cities having increased from 223 to over 660 [1,2,3]. This is a relatively low number in comparison with the average European urban population of roughly 70 to 80 percent and more than 80 percent in the United States, it is worth noting that China’s rate of urbanization took a significantly short amount of time (1978–2012) to rise from 20 percent to above 60 percent. The annual average growth rate has exceeded 3 percent and 30 million more people per year enter the urban population. The country’s urban population is likely to reach 926 million by 2025 and top 1 billion by 2030
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