Seeing ghosts: parsing China's "ghost city" controversy

Controversy 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...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Urban geography 2017-09, Vol.38 (8), p.1270-1281
Main Authors: Woodworth, Max D., Wallace, Jeremy L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
China
Cities
Disputes
Economic growth
ghost city
Ghosts
Growth models
Housing
land development
new town
New towns
Parsing
Urban areas
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Controversy 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.
ISSN:0272-3638
1938-2847
DOI:10.1080/02723638.2017.1288009