Ghost Cities Research Articles

Sorting through Neoliberal Variations of Ghost Cities in China

Since 1978, the Chinese central government has undertaken a series of market-oriented policy reforms which has led to responsibility for urban development shifting from central government to the local level, i.e., the provincial, prefectural city and district governments. As a result, local district governments in China’s larger cities have become key players driving economic development through an intensive process of entrepreneurial urbanization (where markets drive urban policy). These urban projects are best characterized as property-led, encouraged by neoliberal policies such as government support for land-based urban growth coalitions and property speculation. Based on local government planning and infrastructure development, this process has led to several newly built districts or towns. However, they have become ghost cities due to their lack of inhabitants and empty apartment units (apartment units are often purchased as part of an investment portfolio rather than as primary residences). This paper will unpack economic mechanisms and government motivations behind three iterations of ghost cities, to explore how local governments interact with central government as well as with property developers to expand urbanization. We examine three cases, the distinct urban contexts of Shanghai Thames town, Ordos, and Kunming (reflecting suburban tourism; debt-financed urbanism; and pro-growth strategic urbanism respectively) – to examine the variations across ghost cities in China (both in terms of neoliberal mechanisms and its outcomes).

Evolution of Chinese Ghost Cities

In the late 2000s, the phenomenon of ghost cities emerged in China, including not only boomtowns such as Ordos but also “ordinary” third- and fourth-tier cities such as Changzhou. Based on a conceptual framework of China’s land-driven growth machine under entrepreneurial governance, we update the ghost city phenomenon through an in-depth empirical study of a third-tier city, Changzhou. The objective of this paper is to expand our understanding of how excessive accumulation of real estate assets has come to dominate the landscape of this type of city against the background of China’s economic slowdown. The author argues that overbuilding is due to the malfunction of the classic urban expansion model under entrepreneurial governance. In the case of Changzhou, the local government continued massive “sales” of residential and commercial land while effective housing demand was declining due to slowdowns in the local manufacturing industry and in population growth. In response to the “New Normal” advocated by the central government, the government of Changzhou redirected its land and housing policy. Nevertheless, more profound reforms are needed to change the paradigm of growth-oriented urbanism.

“Ghost cities” identification using multi-source remote sensing datasets: A case study in Yangtze River Delta

Drastic urbanization has taken place in China during the last two decades. Recently, a considerable number of “ghost cities” have emerged due to the extensive and unreasonable urban expansion which far exceeds the practical demand. In order to investigate “ghost cities”, we proposed a feasible framework by utilizing multi-source remote sensing datasets, including nighttime light imagery, land cover type products and population grid. After eliminating blooming effect of nighttime imagery by a proposed modified optimal threshold method (MOTM) and extracting built-up area from land cover type products, we developed a “ghost city” index (GCI) to quantify and evaluate the intensity of “ghost city” phenomenon in Yangtze River Delta at county/district level. The GCI was established according to the intrinsic features of “ghost cities”, comprising three criteria: consistency of lit area and built-up area, illumination intensity and population density. Then, we explored the spatial pattern of “ghost cities” of different GCI categories and the ternary contour was applied to demonstrate the key factor among three criteria. Our finding implies that “ghost cities” are prominently spatial clustered. Meanwhile, counties and new development zones have higher risk of suffering from the phenomenon, while capital cities and municipal cities have an alleviative effect for ambient regions. Besides, regions with higher intensity of the phenomenon tend to have less balanced composition among three criteria. Our results show good consistency with previous reports and studies, providing a more objective and spatial explicit insight into the “ghost city” phenomenon. Our findings do not only prove the capability of monitoring “ghost cities” using remote sensing data, but would also be beneficial to urban planning and regional sustainable development.

Seeing ghosts: parsing China’s “ghost city” controversy

ABSTRACTControversy has arisen in recent years over the creation of so-called “ghost cities” across China. The ghost city term tends to describe large-scale urban areas, sometimes planned as new towns, featuring an abundance of new built space and appearing to also have extremely low tenancy. This article examines key questions related to the ghost city phenomenon, such as: what is a ghost city? Are ghost cities driven by a tendency toward over-supply in housing? How are local-level political incentives aligned to foster the production of ghost cities? Are ghost cities temporary anomalies or structural features of China’s urban-led economic growth model? We discuss recent scholarly research into ghost cities and present original findings to show how an excess of urban space may plague certain Chinese cities.

Evaluating cities' vitality and identifying ghost cities in China with emerging geographical data

With the rapid urbanization of China, plenty of new urban lands have been developed with the great expectation to deal with all kinds of issues in old urban areas such as high population density, great demand on limited land resources, and decaying environment. However, a great proportion of vacancy in these newly developed units leads to the undesired observation of ghost cities. Lacking of clear and effectively evaluation criterion, the understanding of ghost cities in China is then rather limited. Considering the fact of ghost cities, we borrow the theory of urban vitality to identify and evaluate ghost cities in this paper. We argue that ghost cities are associated with very low urban vitality. In the light of big/open data, we are able to profile ghost cities of China based on 535,523 recent project-level residential developments from 2002 to 2013. We use the national-wide and million magnitude road junctions, points of interest and location based service records of 2014/2015 for measuring the morphological, functional and social vitality of each residential project. We then aggregate the project level evaluation results into the city level and thirty ghost cities are then identified by comparing the residential projects' vitality in the old (developed before or in 2000) and new (developed after 2000) urban areas in each city. Our profiling results illustrate the big picture of China's past residential developments, and then of ghost cities. We find the average vitality of residential projects in new urban areas is only 8.8% of that in old urban areas, denoting the potential existence of ghost cities in newly developed areas in Chinese cities. We have also benchmarked our identified ghost cities with existing rankings, the Baidu searching engine and night-time light images. Although we admit that ghost cities may exist in the particular urbanizing phase of China and that some ghost cities now may be well developed in the future, this study provides a thorough evaluation on the ghost city condition in China. This may shed light on policy implications for Chinese urban development.

Ghost city phenomenon along China's high-speed railway grid

A fresh urbanism era appears in China with the development of high-speed railway (HSR). Voluminous numbers of local governments are designing and erecting novel cities oriented to the HSR stations with the objective of gaining benefits from the HSR system. Nevertheless, a huge number of these freshly erected districts or cities entail a tremendously high vacancy rate, thereby resulting in 'ghost cities'. The present paper commences with an outline of the China's urban HSR growth and the phenomena of ghost cities. After a literature review on worldwide urban HSR development, the reasons behind the 'ghost city phenomenon' in China are analysed. In the end, the study is concluded by proposing several suggestions for HSR development.

Фрески церкви Тиграна Оненца (св. Григория) (1215) в Ани. Конфессиональный аспект

The Church of St. Gregory, also known by the name of Tigran Honents, is one of the most renowned monuments in Ani, one of the historical capitals of Armenia, now a ghost city. Unlike many other local monuments, the church has reached our days in a good state of preservation, thanks to which its murals have been preserved. The frescoes of Tigran Honents have long been a subject of interest for researchers: information regarding them can be found in the works by N. Marr, N. Sichyov, H. Orbely, D. Gordeyev, N. Thierry, A. Kakovkin, and others. They are of great interest both from artistic and iconographic standpoints; besides, they have a number of peculiarities which still keep specialists from reaching a unanimous viewpoint regarding their national and confessional identity. For this reason, we have devoted our report to the frescoes of Tigran Honents, especially taking into account the recent approaches to the issue, elaborated in the past several decades, and the fact that the monument has become accessible for researchers. We shall discuss the frescoes of Tigran Honents only from the standpoint of their confessional and national belonging.The murals of Tigran Honents are particularly distinguished for their stylistic affinity with the local Oriental tradition, while their iconography makes them akin to the Byzantine tradition. Besides, they are accompanied with bilingual inscriptions in Greek and Georgian, while their subject and characters are connected with an important event in the history of Armenia — the adoption of Christianity as the state religion. The frescoes include a hagiographic cycle depicting Gregory the Enlightener, the only one of the kind to have reached our days. There are also two scenes depicting the virgin followers of St. Hripsime.The frescoes of Tigran Honents have been attributed to Armenian Chalcedonian art, which took form as a result of the convergence of various traditions. We particularly have focused our attention on the language of the aforementioned inscriptions, the issue that has not always been interpreted in the context of the medieval realm. The iconographic and stylistic analyses of the frescoes have enabled us to reveal the precise features typical of Armenian Chalcedonian art and to clarify the issue of the confessional and national belonging of the Churchof Tigran Honents.

Ghost city phenomenon along China's high-speed railway grid

Ghost city phenomenon along China's high-speed railway grid

Corporate governance and Chinese ghost cities

Sir David Tweedy, the former chair of the International Accounting Standards Board, observed: “The scandals that we have seen in recent years are often attributed to accounting although, in fact, I think the U.S. cases are corporate governance scandals involving fraud” (Tweedy, 2007). This paper will show that many of the recent Chinese cases of fraudulent financial reporting are also really corporate governance scandals involving fraud.

China’s Phantom Urbanisation and the Pathology of Ghost Cities

ABSTRACTThis article examines the production of China’s “ghost cities” and constant urban expansion to challenge the dominant conceptual narrative of rural-to-urban migration as the driver of urbanisation. It argues that behind China’s “miraculous” urbanisation story is a powerful ideological commitment to urban growth as the “royal road” to modernity and assessment of political performance. Local governments have a wide-ranging “tool-kit” for pursuing urbanisation, ranging from administrative border-drawing to expropriation of rural land and investment in expanding urban infrastructures. Urbanisation is the destination to which all paths seem to lead. Indeed, local states pursue the construction of new urban space, even when doing so harms them financially. But why? The concept of phantom urbanisation names the process whereby constructing the aesthetic form of the urban is even more important to local state actors than economic, demographic or environmental repercussions.

Challenges and the way forward in China’s new-type urbanization

China’s urbanization has been a notable global event. The National New Urbanization Plan (2014–2020) unveiled by the Chinese Central Government revealed a new path for urbanization that accommodated unique Chinese characteristics. The most notable aspect was the transfer from land-centered urbanization to people-oriented urbanization. Given that land urbanization was the key to the previous orbit, this manuscript aims to analyze the evolution and challenge for land-centered urbanization, and way forward for people-oriented urbanization in China. With increasing urban populations and expanding industrial activities, China has experienced vigorous land urbanization and an uneven population distribution pattern since 1978. Land-centered urbanization has created some economic and social benefits, but has also posed many adverse impacts. The issues of the loss of arable land, the phenomenon of “ghost cities,” and the urban heat island effect have become critical challenges. Eight suggestions from two perspectives are recommended in this manuscript for achieving new-type urbanization in China. We should give priority to this issue of the citizenization of peasant migrants. Government, scientists, and the public can all combine to influence the development trajectories of China’s new-type urbanization.

Thomas Gordon’sLetteron Earthquakes (1750)

Thomas Gordon’s very last piece of writing, A Letter of Consolation and Counsel to the Good People of England, occasioned by the late earthquake (published just a few weeks before his death), was inspired by two minor earthquakes that hit London in 1750. Curiously, they occurred respectively on 8 February and 8 March, arousing the hysterical expectation that a new and devastating quake would hit London on 8 April, which was Palm Sunday. What’s more, the year fell exactly in the middle of the century, something that could not be ignored by millenarianists. On Friday 6 April a veritable exodus began out into the countryside. The following day London appeared to be a ghost city. But nothing happened on Sunday: Providence had been merciful. A Dissertation upon Earthquakes, their Causes and Consequences published in London in 1750 for James Roberts, a copious printer of pamphlets with a fondness for unorthodox ones, ended by warning ‘those who take a pleasure in moralizing’ on such events that ‘fear is a slavish passion that ceases almost as soon as the rod is withdrawn’. An ill-boding prophet published A Letter of Congratulation, and Advice from the Devil to the Inhabitants of London and Westminster on their Conduct before, at and after, the late Earthquakes.1 Above all, it was a letter from the Bishop of London, Thomas Sherlock, that touched a deep chord in many Londoners. Ten thousand copies were sold in the first two days. A 52,000-copy reprint followed in the same year, plus three further editions in London and one in Glasgow. ‘Thy little Letter,’ the Quaker controversialist Joseph Besse noted in 1750 in his Modest Remarks on Sherlock’s Letter, ‘has brought more money to thy bookseller, than all the impressions of prophane books, of any kind, have brought to the whole trade for this twelvemonth past’. In his Letter to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; on occasion of the late Earthquakes, the Bishop of London did not hesitate to sustain that divine wrath, of which these light tremors was merely an anticipation, had been aroused by various deviant forms of sexual and social behaviour stemming from growing Catholic proselytism; by the unchecked publication of satirical, philosophical, or erotic works; by regular performances of theatre and musical productions on non-religious topics; and by the failure to be guided by religious precepts in educating children. It was this threatening letter by Bishop Sherlock, and the associated retribution theology, that prompted Gordon to write his anonymous consolatory letter: Earthquakes … are produced from natural causes. … Supernatural causes are only sought and urged by visionaries, dealers in judgments, and by sharpers in theology, such as pretend to foretell wrath to come, and to avert it; nay, some of them have threatened to bring it. … No wonder that they treat the most learned and able inquirers into the powers of nature, as little philosophers; as men who would utterly spoil and disgrace the theory of judgments, and sink the solemn character of judgment-mongers.2

Salonica, City of Ghosts by Mark Mazower

Mazower’s Salonica was first published in 2004. However, its popularity continues attracting those readers who are keen on developing their knowledge on the rich history of Thessaloniki. In recent years, the book has already been translated into Greek and Turkish languages so that more readers, now, can learn about the rich, vibrant and flamboyant past of Thessaloniki

Tectonic structure, lithology, and hydrothermal signature of the Rainbow massif (Mid-Atlantic Ridge 36°14′N)

Rainbow is a dome-shaped massif at the 36°14′N nontransform offset along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It hosts three ultramafic-hosted hydrothermal sites: Rainbow is active and high temperature; Clamstone and Ghost City are fossil and low temperature. The MoMARDREAM cruises (2007, 2008) presented here provided extensive rock sampling throughout the massif that constrains the geological setting of hydrothermal activity. The lithology is heterogeneous with abundant serpentinites surrounding gabbros, troctolites, chromitites, plagiogranites, and basalts. We propose that a W dipping detachment fault, now inactive, uplifted the massif and exhumed these deep-seated rocks. Present-day deformation is accommodated by SSW-NNE faults and fissures, consistent with oblique teleseismic focal mechanisms and stress rotation across the discontinuity. Faults localize fluid flow and control the location of fossil and active hydrothermal fields that appear to be ephemeral and lacking in spatiotemporal progression. Markers of high-temperature hydrothermal activity (∼350°C) are restricted to some samples from the active field while a more diffuse, lower temperature hydrothermal activity (<220°C) is inferred at various locations through anomalously high As, Sb, and Pb contents, attributed to element incorporation in serpentines or microscale-sulfide precipitation. Petrographic and geochemical analyses show that the dominant basement alteration is pervasive peridotite serpentinization at ∼160–260°C, attributed to fluids chemically similar to those venting at Rainbow, and controlled by concomitant alteration of mafic-ultramafic units at depth. Rainbow provides a model for fluid circulation, possibly applicable to hydrothermalism at oceanic detachments elsewhere, where both low-temperature serpentinization and magmatic-driven high-temperature outflow develop contemporaneously, channeled by faults in the footwall and not along the detachment fault.

China's “Ghost Cities”

Some Chinese cities are now notoriously known as “ghost cities” for their empty skyscrapers, luxury apartments and magnificent squares. These “ghost cities” are a result of excessive housing and infrastructure construction, and speculation on property demand. The emergence of ghost cities is a consequence of China's land-centred urbanisation. Land-centred urbanisation is rooted in local GDPism, which in turn results in aggressive developmentalism and excessive investment among China's local governments.

Health and sanitary status in 1970 of Tubu nomads dwelling in Northeastern Niger.

BackgroundThe Tubu are nomadic people who live in remote parts of the central Sahara, primarily in the Tibesti massif (Chad), and in both Northeastern Niger and Southern Libya. No data about the Tubu’s health and sanitary status are currently available.MethodsIn 1970, the “Mission Anthropologique Belge au Niger” (MABN) investigated a Tubu tribe named Broaya that lived on the northeastern rim of the Tenere desert. One hundred and fifty-one adult volunteers were investigated. The environmental fauna of medical importance was also studied.ResultsAlbeit 43 year-old, these results have not been previously published. The estimated age of death for fathers was approximately 56 years, and that for mothers was 60 years. The overall perinatal mortality rate was 232%, the overall infant mortality rate was 153%, and the overall child mortality rate was 99%. The physical examination found 6 cases of blindness (4.0%). Five subjects presented with an elevated blood pressure (3.3%), and 5 (3.3%) displayed an abnormal thoracic auscultation evocative of tuberculosis or of an acute lung infection. In the field, no blood-fluke eggs were found in the urine samples. The blood thin films and stool samples were preserved then subsequently examined in Toulouse. The search for blood parasites was negative. Three subjects (2%) passed E. histolytica/E. dispar cysts in stools, 16 (10.6%) were parasitized with Giardia sp. and 4 (2.65%) were parasitized with Hymenolepis nana. Two specimens of scorpions captured in the camp were subsequently identified as belonging to the harmful genus Androctonus or Leiurus. An investigation into the freshwater fauna was conducted in the marshy ponds surrounding the ghost city of Djado, and no intermediate snail hosts for schistosomiasis haematobium were found. Larvae and nymphs, of Anopheles hispaniola and of An. multicolor, which are not efficient vectors for malaria, were collected.ConclusionsInfection-related blindness and trachoma, along with acute pulmonary infections and probably tuberculosis were the major health burden in this tribe. The harsh dry and hot climate may explain the low prevalence of soil-transmitted protozoan diseases or helminthiases.

La première œuvre de Jean Genet

The author compares two versions of the work which Jean Genet himself entitled «Lettre a Ibis», the word «lettre» pointing to the literary genre through which he wished to express his admiration for Michel Vieuchange’s achievement, i.e. his expedition to the ghost city of Smara. For Genet, Vieuchange is an «artist of genius» and entering Smara was for him the ultimate stage of an «idea» reduced to a pure, quintessential state. The quest for expressivity, the syntactic audacity, the fact that «Lettre a Ibis» begins in prose and ends as free verse are elements showing that, like Vieuchange, Genet was aiming at a form of accomplishment, the creation of a work of art. Given its date (may 1933), «Lettre a Ibis» is the first work that Genet intended for publication.

Coping with the Postmodern: Paul Auster's New York Trilogy

Throughout this essay, I will show the characters of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy moving between modernism and postmodernism, and discuss the way some of them epitomize either largely modernist or postmodernist epistemologies. My purpose is to offer a reconstruction of Auster's dialogue across both, and I will resist situating the novelist in either the modern or the postmodern camp. I see him as rather watching from a distance, while his characters scour the terrain (both terrains, as a matter of fact) for him. My conclusion is that Auster seems to acknowledge the inevitability of inhabiting the cultural space of the postmodern, while staking out a claim to question, or even to challenge, some of its presumptions. While modernism still holds a powerful spell for the protagonists of City of Glass and Ghosts (less so for the latter), the narrator of The Locked Room posits the inextricability of embracing our contemporary sensibility, the postmodern, without necessarily rejecting altogether what went before. Auster associates modernism largely with the secluded, invisible, despicable Fanshawe, whose spell and influence over him the narrator of the third novel of the trilogy manages to break.

Political Machinations in a Rural County

The article discusses corruption and selective policy implementation as general phenomena, related to the configurations of political power and the behavior of key actors in a specific rural county, Benghai County of Anhui Province. The County government only takes up initiatives in which three conditions are met, which are highlighted.

Salonica, city of ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950

The history of a bewilderingly exotic city, rarely written about: five hundred years of clashing cultures and peoples, from the glories of Suleiman the Magnificent to its nadir under Nazi occupation. Salonica is the point where the wonders and horrors of the Orient and Europe have met over the centuries. Written with a Pepysian sense of the texture of daily life in the city through the ages, and with breathtakingly detailed historical research, Salonica evokes the sights, smells, habits, songs and responses of a unique city and its inhabitants. The history of Salonica is one of forgotten alternatives and wrong choices, of identities assumed and discarded. For centuries Jews, Christians and Muslims have succeeded each other in ascendancy, each people intent on erasing the presence of their predecessors, and the result is a city of extraordinarily rich cultural traditions and memories of extreme violence and genocide, one that sits on the overlapping hinterlands of both Europe and the East. Mark Mazower has written a work of astonishing depth and originality about this remarkable city. Magnificently researched and beautifully written, it is more than a book about a place; it studies in detail the way in which three great faiths and peoples have inhabited the same territory, and how smooth transitions and adaptations have been interwoven with violent endings and new beginnings.