Ghost Cities Research Articles

중국 부동산 공급 각도에서 본 유령도시화 현상의 원인 연구

중국 부동산 공급 각도에서 본 유령도시화 현상의 원인 연구

Contested spaces as spectacles

ABSTRACT This article discusses the role of scenographic methodologies in revisiting spaces associated with political conflict and trauma. In doing so, the author presents her artistic research and design process behind the art installation ‘Spectators in a Ghost City’, the exhibition of the Cyprus National participation in the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space 2023 which places the occupied city of Famagusta, abandoned since 1974, as a contested-space-becoming-spectacle. The author describes how analysing the space through a scenographic lens allows a close examination of the city’s materiality and how this, in turn, becomes the source for artistic creation. Focusing on the scenographic process of scaling down, sculptural maquettes and portable models in walking practices are approached as symbolic objects for communicating issues on displacement, space politics, surveillance and agency. In that sense, scenographic methodologies are discussed as thinking processes, a political act of resistance, and a tool for negotiating artistic practices and real spaces of conflict. This process is defined as ‘scenography reversed’, where a real place becomes a dramatised scene, allowing alternative understandings that expand beyond hegemonic narratives. The article places Famagusta as a paradigm of contested spaces and questions whether scenographic methodologies can be a possible approach to reconciliation and conflict resolution.

Redefining the boundaries of Chinese cities—Analysis based on multisource geographical big data

In the process of rapid urbanization in China, the development of Chinese cities is progressing rapidly and urgently needs a new method of city boundary division that can reflect the true boundaries of cities. This study uses national road intersection and points of interest (POIs) data from 2016, among other multisource big data, to define the true boundaries of Chinese cities in that year. The results show the following: first, the use of clustering algorithms resulted in 6789 preliminary natural cities in 2016. Second, the combination of POI data and the elimination of POIs with a value of zero or below a threshold resulted in 4905 natural cities in China in 2016. Third, the 4905 natural cities were divided into four groups, resulting in 1981 sprawling cities, 842 vibrant and nonexpanding cities, 1048 expanding and nonvibrant cities, and 1034 vibrant and expanding cities. Fourth, the number and distribution of “ghost cities” nationwide were determined, with 612 natural cities identified as “ghost cities.” Fifth, various big datasets were used to verify the scientificity and rationality of the classification in this study.

SUSTAINABILITY IN PROPERTY TAXATION: AN APPLICATION FOR REVENUE STABILITY AND FAIRNESS PERSPECTIVES, THE CITY OF BUFFALO, NY

The scholarly modeling of property tax has always posed a challenge, with two primary concerns to be addressed: first, maintaining sustainability in the collection, which is primarily a concern for local governments; and second, ensuring fair distribution, which is of greater concern for citizens. In today’s practices, assessment-based property tax increases unmatched expenses in bubble economies. There is a substitution problem in rapid falls, the tendency to not decrease the assessments gives way to black holes and opens the door to ghost cities. This paper proposes alternative approaches, aside from market/land value or last sold price, aimed at improving sustainability and fairness rates. The dataset examined is based on 93.7K records and 88 attributes for assessed value of properties within the City of Buffalo, the United States of America. Since the label (Total Value) is a numerical and continuous value, regression models are selected, where ensemble machine learning methods categorically work well with larger datasets, combined with weak learners, like decision trees. Stacked Ensemble led the least error for regression with 0.98 R2, followed by Gradient Boosting. Results show a 79% dominance of uncontrollable attributes, such as Land Value, Neighborhood, and Sale (last sold) Price, compared to controllable attributes, such as Total Living Area, Construction Grade, Second Story Area, and many others. This article suggests having a more balanced split between uncontrollable and controllable attributes would contribute to both sustainability and fair distribution.

“Ghost city” or habitable city? The production and transformation of space in China's new towns

China's new town and ghost city phenomenon has attracted interest from academics and the media since the 2010s. There is, however, little research on the lived experiences of people in new towns, or of the transformation of these new towns. This paper uses Lefebvre's spatial triad to examine how the spaces of the new town are produced and transformed by interactions between multiple actors. Using an analytical framework based on the spatial triad, we explore the interactive mechanisms and the dialectical relationships within the triad. Taking Kangbashi, a new town in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, as a case study, we explore how the spatial production of a new town is co-created by multiple actors, and local government-led conceived space plays a dominant role in that creation. Through interactions in the dynamic nexus of conceived-perceived-lived space, the new town space is in the process of transformation from an empty “ghost city” to a comfortable habitable city. This research deepens our understanding of new towns and production of space by connecting state-led and capital-driven urban construction with the lived practices of residents. Moreover, this empirical Chinese study contributes to knowledge and understanding across diverse global urban contexts.

중국 어얼둬쓰시 캉바스의 유령도시화 현상 해소 연구

중국 어얼둬쓰시 캉바스의 유령도시화 현상 해소 연구

Thessaloniki: A City in Transition, 1912–2012 ed. by Dimitris Keridis and John Brady Kiesling

Reviewed by: Thessaloniki: A City in Transition, 1912–2012 ed. by Dimitris Keridis and John Brady Kiesling Iakovos D. Michailidis (bio) Dimitris Keridis and John Brady Kiesling, eds., Thessaloniki: A City in Transition, 1912–2012. London and New York: Routledge, 2021. Pp. xvii + 390. 54 illustrations. Paper £29.59. The history of Thessaloniki attracts many researchers from various countries, not only Greeks—and not without good reason. Thessaloniki has some features [End Page 145] which set it apart from most other cities of the Balkans and the southeastern Mediterranean. Among recent synthetic studies, Mark Mazower’s Salonica, City of Ghosts (2004) undoubtedly stands out, because Mazower introduced Thessaloniki to international historiography in an inspired and narratively unique way. Now, a new edited volume includes contributions delivered at an international conference held in Thessaloniki in October 2012 on the occasion of the centennial of the city’s liberation from Ottoman rule and its incorporation in the modern Greek state. The volume contains twenty-three articles and an extensive introduction written by the editors. It may be pointed out that a corresponding Greek version of this volume includes more articles than the English one—yet nowhere is it explained by what criteria some articles have been included here while others have been left out. According to the editors, the involvement of the then-mayor of Thessaloniki, Giannis Boutaris, was decisive in the organization/direction of the conference. For example, the original plan to focus on the Greek presence in the city was revised and replaced by an attempt to enrich its history with new perspectives and to confirm its position in international literature (2–3). The twenty-three articles in this volume are organized into three sections: “Searching for Identity,” “A City in Transition,” and “Mapping the Future of Thessaloniki.” The editors have tried to summarize and evaluate the city's centenary history through these three general themes, and the volume features contributions by renowned historians, including, among others, Mark Mazower, Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Philip Mansel, Eyal Ginio, Evangelos Hekimoglou, and Basil Gounaris. Still, the list of renowned researchers, whose papers are undoubtedly of high quality, does not automatically imply a thematic completeness and balance that would justify the ambitious title of the international conference and the corresponding volume. This is why both the introduction and the conclusions to the volume are often disconnected from the other articles. The editors correctly declare that their purpose was not to record the entirety of Thessaloniki's historical past. The first main axis of their approach is to “search for identity” in the city and to understand “the debates over the identity before and immediately after 1912” (7). The second axis relates to “the transition from an imperial to a national system and how that affected the city and its residents,” while the third involves discussion of how to “foster debate on what future the city deserves” (6–7). Properly studying all three axes—and especially the first two—requires a tightly structured theoretical approach. However, the topic of “identities” has been largely limited here to the study of national and religious minorities, with an emphasis on Jews, Muslims, and Bulgarians. Other identities—e.g., the Greeks—seem to be absent or are featured [End Page 146] only in a rather distorted manner (for instance through the arrival of Greek refugees) and mainly as a result of the Greco-Turkish War. In their introduction the editors focus, very aptly, on the Young Turk movement of 1908 as a pivotal point not only for the Muslim community of Thessaloniki but also for the whole region and for the personality of Mustafa Kemal, who was born in the city. With regard to Kemal, the editors note that he was “raised in a multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan imperial city gradually encircled by the hostile nationalisms of the bordering Christian states,” and they admit that he “distilled the ideas but also the contradictions of Young Turk nationalism” (3–4). But what are the contradictions of Young Turk nationalism? The reader will never know. And this might not have been of great importance if not for the connection to two other seminal events Thessaloniki’s history. The first of these...

ГОРОД-ПРИЗРАК В ПОЗДНЕСОВЕТСКОМ КИНЕМАТОГРАФЕ

In the Late Soviet years, there was a feeling of the collapse of many former creative attitudes and traditions, the destruction or withering away of the ethical and aesthetic values ​​of the Soviet era, which was perceived as the collapse of artistry itself in its substantive and formal aspects. The blurring of the boundaries between realities and the absence of stable temporary “anchors” characterize the aura of film substance. The concept of “Ghost City” was developed on the material of the Late Soviet films “City Zero”, “The Museum Visitor” and “Days of Eclipse”. Fragmentary states, confusion of consciousness and the loss of a sense of a solid firmament under their feet, a solid system of values ​​and spiritual guidelines are also observed in the heroes of the films. There is a throwing between the fictional heroes of reality and real everyday life. The image of the “ghostly” city is characterized, first of all, by the abstractness of its geographical coordinates and the narrative model of the hive, which absorbs the arriving stranger deeper and deeper into itself.

The Lice, and: Scythe, and: Double Occupancy, and: Devotional

The Lice, and: Scythe, and: Double Occupancy, and: Devotional Marlo Starr (bio) The Lice The first event is known to have been an expulsion, and the last is hoped to be a reconciliation and return. —Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping Our story begins with an expulsion. Mom swivelsto count and recount the milling brood. Us,sticky and slick with shampoo. See, I'm just below,on the back porch, crouched between her knees,my bright scalp bared for the biteof the comb. The boys launch cicadas onto the roof,the girls mock-scold, their heads lacquered whiteto drown the new colonies. Except for J who propsthe Children's Bible against the freezer boxto study its pictures: a sword bars the gardenwith orange flames, fig-leafed Adam and Eveclutch each other at the gates. J drops the tomeon the cement slab where cloudy drops pool.I try to make out the teeming multitude.Mom holds the comb for me to see:"You needed proof?" [End Page 13] Scythe There is a diagram imprinted in me,a first-tooth memory, my early phantomroot. I'd like to hold myself againstits hard edge, to arrange the giveand sag of me into its stony relief,but the order of the world is lesstaut, a false equation of hieroglyphand brassy machine. Herethe remains of a marbling tulipinfection. All those clawed headsmake a garish heap on the floor.In the clean language of want,a fixed lexicon for love:even the epitaph lies. The silenceis not still. They are mowingand mowing your grave [End Page 14] Double Occupancy My father purchases the burial plots years before she dies. A doubleoccupancy cement bunker, the bottom for my mother. She sits sunk in the reclining chair with her eyes closed, listening or not. Sometimes she slathers Vaseline on her cracked heels and covers them with socks. I move houses and give away the round table, the plants. I move houses again and give away the bed I shared for a time with someone and then with someone else. A month before her funeral, she asks my father to spend the extra money for a plot where they will lie side by side. I sit outside in the cold sun with my sister, the baby crying. "Mom" in the call record makes me think I've missed her again. There are still dishes in the sink when I leave for the airport. Someone in the flat dark is waiting for me to return across the distance. I press my temple to the glass. [End Page 15] Devotional I read words but don't hear God in them. —Susan Howe Friends send words on grieving. Instead, I cometo rely on the mystery of facts—the composition of tears, more mineral than fluid, a different saltarchitecture for relief or prayer. The book of photos magnifies their scale: landscapes repeatin miniature, binding crystal, the substance of stars or stone. On the bus, the crumbling paperwhitesgather in my lap, fallen from the nest of pages, the dusting of petals and pollen—how didn't I notice? Lost in the private room of a sentence. Under the microscope, spires of elationburst in fireworks of glass, while onion tears bloom in the dense symmetry of fern. [End Page 16] The bus rumbles across the city's grid.Through the windows, the stream of red brick material as myth, continuous as a voicemoving over the face of the waters. [End Page 17] Marlo Starr marlo starr is a writer and assistant professor of English at Wittenberg University. Her poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Ghost City Review, Napkin Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2023 Marlo Starr

Magnolias at the End of the World

Magnolias at the End of the World Catherine Garbinsky (bio) Wind whipped every cheek as pink as the ginger petal which gangles its long teenage limb we remember the bare branch the waxen leaf reflecting the moon's face there have been a lot of dead possums on the road no one watching where they are going eyes lit up at dusk breaks sigh as we slow the temperature has dropped skin prickles hair we bring the big comforter back out again and turn the ceiling fan off black walnuts in their green suits thump and rumble on the roof and something is nesting in the eaves you shake your fist and I cup your cheeks in my hands did you hear about now we should probably everyone is starting to we don't finish the sentences or else it's real it's happening it's here instead I move the flower pots on the back porch to find a ring of wriggling insects who have made their home beneath now disturbed by my hands birds watch and wait until I slap hands together brushing off the dirt and head inside before they descend scratching soft at the chipping paint crushing squishing bodies in their beaks satisfying slurp and crunch at three am the trains at the rail yard test their horns long short short long they work we all hear it but every night they check again as if time isn't collapsing in on itself the horn sounds and we are all awake under the blanket dead on the side of the road pecking for scraps on the porch shining pink we hear it coming we lay down on the tracks tie each other down and will there be magnolias then [End Page 84] Catherine Garbinsky Catherine Garbinsky is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They have written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019). Catherine is currently a PhD student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Her work has been featured in Occulum Journal, Coffin Bell Journal, White Stag Press, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2023 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents

Shadows in the City of Light: Paris in Postwar French Jewish Writing ed. by Sara R. Horowitz, Amira Bojadzija-Dan and Julia Creet (review)

Reviewed by: Shadows in the City of Light: Paris in Postwar French Jewish Writing ed. by Sara R. Horowitz, Amira Bojadzija-Dan and Julia Creet Gayle Zachmann Sara R. Horowitz, Amira Bojadzija-Dan, and Julia Creet, eds., Shadows in the City of Light: Paris in Postwar French Jewish Writing, SUNY Series in Contemporary Jewish Literature and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021. 278 pp. 32 illus. Hardcover $95.00. Paperback $32.95. ISBN: 9781438481739, 9781438481746 Shadows in the City of Light: Paris in Postwar French Jewish Writing, edited by Sara R. Horowitz, Amira Bojadzija-Dan, and Julia Creet, presents an English-language collection of fourteen essays that explore literary memory and the ways that the city of Paris may depict absence in select postwar works of Jewish writers. Beautifully crafted, the introduction offers a useful historical survey of the context for Jews in France before, during, and after the war. It establishes the volume’s spatial approach to the palimpsest of Paris history and memorial culture, specifying too that “[t]he Jews of Paris in the books that we study in this volume are mostly from elsewhere, [ . . . ] from Poland, from Germany, from North Africa, contributing to the character of ‘the wandering Jew’ and a ‘uniquely Jewish anxiety’” (4–5). Idealized in literature and painting throughout the nineteenth century, the City of Light was for many Jews of Europe and North Africa a beacon of hope and the land of Jewish emancipation. A magnet for artists and writers in the early decades of the twentieth century, Paris in the interwar years became a refuge for Jews fleeing the rise of fascism. As it did for Thomas Muritz in Vercor’s La Marche à l’étoile (Guiding Star), for the families of these writers, the dream of emigration to France brutally ended with the fall of the Third Republic and the rise of Vichy France during World War II. Taking up important questions of commemoration, history, and living memory, Shadows in the City of Light tracks the tensions that arise when postwar Paris sites meant to laud an emancipatory land of the French Revolution instead become haunted by absences and the Shoah. Focused primarily on Patrick Modiano and George Perec, the volume also offers important pieces on Sarah Kofman, Henri Raczymow, Irene Nemirovsky, and five lesser-known writers. It engages Holocaust memory and trauma studies, examining how [End Page 268] postwar writers explore the relations between the physical, the past, and the present. Organized into five fluid thematic sections—“Topography,” “Familiar Strangers,” “Ambivalences,” “Absence,” and “Past Perfect”—the articles build on each other, elucidating immigrant, 1.5, and second-generation writers’ experiences of Paris spaces. They target maps, addresses, streets, and monuments; hope, disillusionment, memory, and mourning, with each taking on different facets of the works in question. In “Topography,” Julia Creet provides a psycho-geography of Dora Bruder, while Gary D. Mole’s excellent piece on Parisian cartography in Sarah Kofman sets the stage for Annelies Schulte Nordholt’s discussion of phantoms that circulate in Perec’s and Raczymow’s streets. Nadia Malinovich’s rich study of disillusionment and dreams in lesser-known immigrant writers fortuitously frames Henri Raczymow’s reading of Sara Kofman and his own experience in “Familiar Strangers.” Homing in on Modiano and Perec, the essays in “Ambivalences,” and “Absence” feature pieces on mourning and memory, exploring how writers reconcile the City of Light with its dark years during the war. As Thomas Nolden notes, “The act of remembering the victims disrupts the evocations of quintessential Paris tropes. Put differently, writing about Paris’s antisemitic past constitutes a break in French literary history” (165). Closing the volume, “Past Perfect” moves from “Perec’s Ghost City” by Nelly Wolf to Sara R. Horowitz’s “Street Walking Paris,” a consideration of how writers “negotiate memory through spacial practices” (208), as well as how Jewish walkers may “redefine official space to give it personal meaning” (215). Finally, Susan Suleiman traces the shadow of the Holocaust and its impact on the legacy of Nemirovsky’s unfinished wartime manuscript in “The Afterlife of Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française.” Exploring different genres, Shadows in the City of Light features...

The ghost city: chronicles of the apocalypse after COVID-19

La ciudad fantasma: crónicas del apocalipsis post COVID-19ResumenPropuesta la presente nota intenta explicar el futuro de la ciudad turística en un contexto posterior al COVID-19. Habiendo dicho eso debe destacarse que la pandemia ha hecho estragos en la industria turística como así también en el comercio global. Los especialistas sugieren que el mundo global a los niveles iniciales anteriores a la pandemia se recuperará a mediados de 2023.Metodologíael presente trabajo es una discusión conceptual que focaliza en los efectos del COVID-19 en la imagen de la ciudad turística.Alcancesla ciudad turística atraviesa por estos días cambios radicales que afectan su naturaleza. Usamos el término ciudad fantasma [ghost city] para referirnos a los efectos socio-culturales a largo alcance de las medidas restrictivas para frenar el avance de la enfermedad. Nociones clásicas como “el Otro,” y la globalización deben ser re-conceptualizadas a raíz de la reconfiguración de las nuevas fronteras y de discursos racistas y radicalizados tendientes a negar a ese “Otro” diferente.Implicacionesel trabajo introduce a los lectores en la literatura especializada destacando las tensiones entre la ciudad turística y la ciudad como lugar de protesta y negociación. La ciudad turística es una creación directa del proceso globalizador que ha configurado las zonas urbanas.Implicaciones prácticasel presente trabajo discute críticamente como la crisis del COVID-19 ha marcado la forma de relacionarnos en la circulación. Estamos forzados a vivir nuestra proximidad por intermedio de las redes digitales, y un televisor, alterando las bases mismas del estado de libre tránsito y los derechos fundamentales a la circulación.Originalidadentre unos de los temas más originales que aborda el trabajo se encuentra el pasaporte sanitario, documento emitido por el estado para dar movilidad al sujeto. El pasaporte sanitario transforma no sólo la forma de validad la identidad, sino que introduce la tecnología al servicio de vigilancia del estado sobre el sujeto. En el mundo post COVID-19 el turista se transformado en un huésped indeseado.

Evaluating the human use efficiency of urban built environment and their coordinated development in a spatially refined manner

Urban sustainability requires a coordinated development between urban built environment and human activities in cities. The irrational allocation of built environment stocks such as buildings and roads has led to urban problems like urban villages and ghost cities. However, the human use efficiency of urban built environment within cities and their coordinated development at a high spatial resolution remain hitherto poorly understood. Here, we aim to address this knowledge gap by leveraging the coupling coordination degree (CCD) method and emerging geospatial big data. We develop a framework that considers intra-city heterogeneity to achieve high-resolution mapping of the CCD between built environment and human activity at a grid level of 250m*250m for a case of Beijing, China. Our results show that the CCD of urban built environment and human activity in Beijing has a significant spatial correlation with a global Morans I of 0.716 and the two subsystems are well coupled in most areas. While the built environment subsystem lags in some old urban areas and commercial districts in the city center, human activity lags slightly in areas such as factories at the edge of the city. We suggest such methods could be extended to other cities to inform urban spatial planning and infrastructure development and maximize the human use efficiency of urban built environment in different cities and at different stages of urban development.

A Pile Of Ghosts: A Cinematic Heterotopia of Spectral Urbanization

A Pile of Ghosts (2021) is an artistic hybrid film in-between fiction and documentation created through the process of the art based research project Of Haunted Spaces. This research on Chinese ghost cities was a journey in exploring locations and looking for protagonists for the film, that would embody the urbanization processes surfaced as the phenomena of haunted cities by the spectral production of capitalism. As the process of filmmaking goes, settings and castings are staged to re-enact situations that have been observed during the field trips that were undertaken in many parts of China. The search for the unknown narrative keeps modifying and displacing the semantics of the film script. Therefore, in A Pile of Ghosts the line between documentary and fiction, a discursive space, is created in which facts, analyses and references are fused. This is not only to scrutinize the social reality and to render its discourse, but also to foster an aesthetic dimension from reexamining the convention of filmmaking and its representations. It is the method of a performative documentary to enact and re-enact situations and sites to reveal the contradictory characteristics of global urbanziation. The research process is transformed into the making of the film from field research to scriptwriting and casting. The protagonists are appearing in changing roles as construction workers, real estate agents, and investors to enact the realities of capitalism. On the threshold between the visible and the invisible, the haunting ghost of capitalism is materializing in the poiesis of the film, lurking in the limbo zone of fiction, reality and the performative.

Shared Histories in Multiethnic Societies: Literature as a Critical Corrective of Cultural Memory Studies

AbstractThe staging of history in literature is engaged in dynamic exchange with society’s memory discourses and in this context, literature is generally seen as playing a creative role as a formative medium in memory cultures. For some time, however, many feel that established concepts of Cultural Memory Studies need to be reconsidered for multiethnic societies. The assumption is that official memory cultures tend to exclude people with a migrant background from identity-forming discourses about the past. Using Germany as an example, this paper argues, first, that the question of memory in multiethnic societies needs to be reconsidered indeed, but in a different direction than has been assumed so far, and, second, that much-discussed concepts such as the post-migrant paradigm or multidirectional memory tend to circumvent the problems at hand rather than contribute to their solution. The paper therefore discusses the preconditions for a literary-theoretical engagement with this socio-political issue and the direction in which an alternative conceptualization would have to go – that is, not a new theory or method, but anovel perspectivethat should bethe basis for future theory building.Rather than confining the notion of a »shared history« to, either the common history of a country’s native population, or to the historysincemigration shared by minorities and receiving society, this paper proposes to focus on actual links between the histories of Germany as the receiving society and the histories of the new Germans’ countries of origin. Using literary texts and discussing a concrete example, it brings such shared histories to the fore and explores how theyopen up national memory discourses transnationally. The underlying vision is that these important components of multiethnic societies have the potential to show a way in which national and transnational memory landscapes as a whole could be transformed. In this sense, the metaphor of »Migration into Other Pasts« may be rephrased as migrationnot»into the past of others« but aterritorial move within one common shared history. The paper therefore shows that the prerequisites for a literary-theoretical examination of the question of memory culture in multiethnic societies and its literary representations must be sought in the offerings of literature itself. The literary example, Orkun Ertener’s novelLebt(Alive/Live! 2014), with its numerous entangled and interweaving shared histories shows particularly clearly how literature can function as a drive or even theory generator for concepts to be developed – instead of, conversely, imposing readymade concepts on both German multiethnic societies and its literary production.The novel perspective of this paper can be summarized in the inversion of the conventional point of departure: Instead of looking for a way to include people with a migrant background into the German memory culture, the first question to be asked should be how, in the age of the general recognition of concepts of entangled history, the idea could arise and persist for so long that migrants with Turkish roots, for instance, have no relation to German history. By focusing on the historical connectivities between Germans and new Germans, Orkun Ertener’s novelLebtchooses a different approach in this regard. It provides a transnational expansion of memory discourses on German, Greek, Jewish and Turkish/Ottoman history and thus opens up a new and long overdue memory space that is of central interest to multiethnic societies in Germany and beyond. As it seems, it takes writers who are more interested in entangled histories than in history as a resource for identity to get this right. Ertener undoubtedly belongs to this type of writers, as evidenced not least by the fact that he cites or refers to some of the most important historical studies for his context from Mark Mazower’sSalonica – City of Ghosts, a standard reference on the multiethnic and multicultural history of Thessaloniki, toTurkey, the Jews and the Holocaustby Corry Guttstadt who challenged the myth of a Jewish-friendly policy in Turkey. Ertener’s novelLebtis saturated with the interconnected histories of various ethnic groups and may therefore serve as ablueprintfor a vision of memory culture in a multiethnic society.In conclusion, the essay outlines that developing an alternative concept of memory and historical consciousness in multiethnic societies and their literary representations cannot be based on much-discussed concepts such as post-migration or multidirectional memory. Although a superficial glance suggests that they might be the obvious choice for the topic of this paper, a novel take on multiethnic memory landscapes must start from specific shared histories and their entanglements. The paper therefore proposes that a bottom-up development of theoretical-methodological work is necessary in the case of representations of memory in multiethnic societies. This approach must highlight how links between the histories of the receiving societies and the histories of the migrants’ countries of origin are, or could become, important components of an alternative memory culture in multiethnic landscapes – and that these links hold the potential for transforming national and transnational memory landscapes as a whole.

Underload city conceptual approach extending ghost city studies

Global population growth and land development are highly imbalanced, marked by 43% of population increase but 150% of built-up area expansion from 1990 to 2018. This results in the widely concerned ghost city phenomenon and runs against the sustainable development goals. Existing studies identify ghost cities by population densities, but ignore the spatial heterogeneity of land carrying capacities (LCC). Accordingly, this study proposes a general concept termed underload city to define cities carrying fewer people and lower economic strength than their LCC. The underload city essentially describes imbalanced human-land relationship and is understood in a broader context than the usually applied ghost city. In this study, very high-resolution satellite images are analyzed to obtain land functional structures, and further combined with population and GDP data to derive LCC. We empirically identify eight underload cities among 81 major Chinese cities, differing from previous findings of ghost cities. Accordingly, the proposed underload city considers heterogeneous human-land relationships when assessing city loads and contributes to sustainable city developments.

Of Haunted Spaces

Of Haunted Spaces is an art-based research project focusing on Chinese ghost cities. This exposition follows the making of an essay film that combines acting and documenting to indicate the phantasmatic aspect of global capitalism. In China, the need to maintain and boost economic growth through surplus production results in more cities being built than are needed. This exposition investigates how global capitalism is affecting and haunting living conditions today. Urban spaces, which were once a grandiose vision for boosting prosperity through collective fantasy, have now become exhausted and empty sites. Ella Raidel develops a performative documentary film to create a discursive space in which facts, analyses, commentaries, and references are woven into one narrative.

The “ghost neighborhood” phenomenon in China—geographic locations and intra-urban spatial patterns

The phenomenon of “ghost cities” in China has attracted much attention in the past decade. However, the exact areal extents, specific spatial characteristics and economic development conditions of this phenomenon have been rarely investigated and recorded at intra-urban scale throughout China. Against this background, we base our study on a recently published “ghost neighborhood” map of entire China, and we analyze their geographic locations using multiple spatial metrics and categorization approaches at an intra-urban scale. The main results are as follows: 1) we categorize “ghost neighborhoods” into seven representative intra-urban pattern types across China; 2) the newly built “ghost neighborhoods” (after 2001) are mainly concentrated in thriving cities, while a small number of old “ghost neighborhoods” (before 2000) are found in resource depleted areas, that is, in cities of decline; 3) the newly built “ghost neighborhoods” are generally located at the urban edge, far away from city centers, while old “ghost neighborhoods” are found within the built-up area and spatially closer to city centers. Additionally, we relate general processes of urbanization in China with the representative types of “ghost neighborhoods.”

“Ghost City" or Habitable City? The Production of Space in China's New Towns

“Ghost City" or Habitable City? The Production of Space in China's New Towns

The Ocean Floor

The Ocean Floor Carolyn Supinka (bio) Carolyn Supinka, strip, graphic, ocean floor, ocean, the deep sea Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 73] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 74] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 75] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 76] Carolyn Supinka CAROLYN SUPINKA is a writer and visual artist from western Pennsylvania. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where she creates poems, comics, and prints, and works as an arts administrator. She is the author of the chapbook When I Interview Fire, published by Bottlecap Press in 2022, and the microchapbook Inside Voice, published by Ghost City Press in 2021. Her work has recently been published in Hobart, the West Review, Birdcoat Quarterly, and Sixth Finch, and is forthcoming in Passages North. She is the coeditor of Conjunction, a zine collaborative. Copyright © 2022 University of North Carolina Wilmington