The ghost city of China : a revitalization strategy for Ordos

Abstract

Lots of reports about "Ghost Cities" in China have been seen these years, with pictures of thousands of empty high-rise residential buildings and meanwhile acres of vacant land. To maintain high economic growth, the buildings without buyers are made possible by government driven loans. These cities were entirely driven by the GDP-focused government, and were planned with buildings, infrastructures, parks, jobs-a capital utopia, described by New York Times as the cities with everything, but people. As an extreme version of Ghost Cities, Ordos, a city in Inner Mongolia, was once a village on desert with only two thousand people. Thanks to the discovery of huge coal and oil deposits, the city generated immense amounts of wealth and spent billions of dollars on urbanization. However, the fantasy did not stand long when the coal industry collapsed ten years later due to the price downturn.The new town was planned to build capacity for one million residents. Right now, it is at around 500,000, with only 100,000 residents. What we witness now are enormous aborted developments and abandoned structures. By understanding the economic and social mechanism of Ghost Cities, the thesis seeks industrial and infrastructure reforms as opportunities to revise the flawed initial planning of Ordos. Electricity, the major outcome of Ordos' single advantage-coal reserves, could be the leverage for sustainable and interconnected industries which will eventually stimulate economic recovery. Ordos would utilize the opportunities to insert new infrastructures and to reprogram and reuse the excessive and abandoned structures, which would be the framework for new urban pattern. Such new urban pattern and resulted public realm would create an urban and humane built environment. The thesis integrates the relationships between economy, policy, industry, infrastructure, and urban form, and ultimately tries to explore a new model of urbanism and a reversal of planning principles of contemporary China.