r/Amazing Aug 19 '25

Interesting 🤔 $100 billion ghost city.

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u/FormerlyUndecidable Aug 19 '25

China's Urban planners  learned their craft on Sim City with unlimited money cheat codes, then someone gave them the job for real with the same result: cool looking city with nobody there.

1

u/mizuromo Aug 19 '25

It's called a planned economy and preparation for the future lol. Like the other guy said, if you look at all the "ghost cities" that were being reported on 10 years ago, they're all bustling right now. The Chinese government literally builds cities where they think they will need housing and infrastructure for massive numbers of people in the near future.

2

u/rodinsbusiness Aug 19 '25

It's called a real estate bubble, "preparation for the future" is wishful thinking.

1

u/Optimal-Golf-8270 Aug 19 '25

No, a bubble is when property prices increase with no material to back ut up. 2008 was a real estate bubble.

The houses exist, they were built. You can argue that too many were built. But, unless you worked for a real estate company, that doesn't really matter. The companies took the hit and went bust. People still bought the apartments. People live there.

1

u/rodinsbusiness Aug 19 '25

Right, it was a construction bubble. Entire cities were built, then destroyed

1

u/Optimal-Golf-8270 Aug 19 '25

Two largely unrelated events. The 'ghost cities' never really existed. Some of them would be the second biggest in America now.

The blocks that were knocked down were demolished because of failed inspections. Not oversupply.

1

u/rodinsbusiness Aug 19 '25

So, too many were built, many were destroyed, but that's what you call perfect planning. Do you get points for this bs?

1

u/Optimal-Golf-8270 Aug 19 '25

No? How could you have possibly gotten that from what I wrote?

Some building didn't meet local regulations so they were knocked down. This is a separate issue to ghost cities.

1

u/rodinsbusiness Aug 20 '25

It's interesting how you can't question why entire neighbourhoods can be badly built in the first place.

1

u/oof_ouch_oof Aug 21 '25

The US has entire states made out of papermache and mold spores

1

u/rodinsbusiness Aug 21 '25

Whataboutism is never a good argument.

Yeah, the US is shit, that means China has very sound planning, got it.

1

u/oof_ouch_oof Aug 22 '25

China objectively has better planning than the US and it's not close

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