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"Foreigners consider [Kangbashi] to be abandoned. Chinese consider the city to be still developing," [photographer Raphael Olivier] explains.
"A lot of the early news reports focus on it being a failed, weird place -- but it's also a huge accomplishment and people there are not necessarily unhappy, there is a huge sense of hope. You have to respect that on a certain level."
— CNN
Other angles on the effects of China's massive urbanization:China's Manhattan replica continues to lie abandoned as economy slows'Re-education' campaigns teach China's new ghost city-dwellers how to behaveOrdos in 2014 - "Brave City of The Future"Photos Of A Massive Chinese-Built Ghost Town In... View full entry
Today, the real-estate situation in Ordos has turned macabre. Video billboards along the city’s major roadways display mug shots of fugitive developers who have skipped town, fleeing their debts....In the shadows of the deserted construction sites and vacant hotels, there are people. They are the citizens of Ordos — not the inhabitants of a ghost town, but the pioneers of a novel kind of 21st-century urban life. — NYT - T Magazine
Jody Rosen documented The Colossal Strangeness of China’s Most Excellent Tourist City.Previously 1, 2, 3 View full entry
The region of Ordos made headlines in 2010 for the pre-built metropolis that had everything but people. Now, however, Kangbashi city is rapidly filling up with country people who are being encouraged to live in cities and diversify China’s economy. For ageing farmers who’ve spent their whole life on the land, however, becoming “urbanites” is a tall order. — theguardian.com
Related:Ordos: The biggest ghost town in ChinaOrdos in 2014 - "Brave City of The Future" View full entry
Ordos fell away beneath us: a wide, sweeping wasteland of empty towers and silent, disused streets. ...The odd car moved slowly along the main road, where it looped around the centre of Kangbashi to cross the Ordos bridge, and out towards Dongsheng – but for the most part, from this height, Kangbashi looked like a model city; its radical architecture reduced to novelty ornaments, its unfinished towers scattered like broken bricks across a sandpit. — Business Insider
Last year Darmon Richter had a chance to visit Inner Mongolia. He now offers a closer look at the bizarre, ghost metropolis of Ordos.h/t @sevensixfive View full entry