Stunning Photos From China's Creepiest Modern Ghost Town
Welcome to the most ironically-named city in China. A would-be utopia, rapidly constructed for a population of one million (that failed to materialize), the futuristic city of Ordos, which takes its name from ordo, the Mongolian word for crowd and the root for the English word 'horde', has been almost totally abandoned. The stunning landscape left behind in the following images is both disturbing and confirming of China's epic mal-investment boom...
The images, taken by Shanghai-based photographer Raphael Olivier and shared at Creative Boom, depict a strange modern ghost town. The city, in the Inner Mongolia region, was constructed under the old "if you build it, they will come" motto, but the teeming masses have never made their way to Ordos.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
The city includes dormant schools, sports complexes, hospitals, convention centers, and other major facilities, all completed between 2005 and 2010. The Chinese building boom has seen many new cities become overnight metropolises, but Ordos City failed to replicate that success.
"The city is now a surreal landscape of empty streets, decaying monuments, abandoned buildings and half-finished housing projects," writes Olivier. "It is more than anywhere the symbol of the Chinese Dream with all its challenges and contradictions, an Orwellian vision of a bright future caught up by a less flamboyant reality."
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia, the Ordos Museum.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
The city's most fantastical structures include the Ordos Museum, designed by China's MAD Archictects, which resembles a tiled metal blob overlooking the Gobi Desert.
Like the rest of the city, the museum was apparently built without much forethought: "As for the gallery spaces, we didn't know what kind of exhibitions they would hold, so they are designed to be flexible," the architecture firm told ArchDaily.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
"This plaza is now a favorite amongst the locals who gather their families and friends to explore, play or lounge in the pleasant landscape," wrote de zeen magazine upon Ordos's completion in 2011, in a rather premature judgment.
Based on reports from intrepid photojournalists and travelers, including the Bohemian Blog, the city's residents (reportedly just 20,000 souls, or two percent of the total capacity) largely consist of construction crews, maintenance workers, and random employees.
See more of Olivier's photos of Ordos below:
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia, the Ordos mosque.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
We have nothing to add... except one chart...
This is what happens when the central planners get drunk on their own hopium-laced Kool-Aid.
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Cities, like living organisms, must form and grow with reason, purpose, organically, with the desire manifested through these essences, through capitalism as it seeks the most efficient means of deploying resources, as otherwise these cities are just lifeless blobs, devoid of of any meaning or logic.
These structures, overbuilt, gaudy, mausoleums, are simply there, and will serve as a reminder from the Gods of the Copybook Headings, to the folly of those who think they are able to plan and control man.
They will be no better than ugliness that Stalin and the other despots built, as ‘the future’.
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V-V
What about this theory... China has no shame in copying what works around the world, yet at the same time certain aspects of their culture/government are completely controlled nearly the opposite of the rest of the world... so you get fake fundamentals to make them feel healthier than they are... and they look abroad and see the investment strategies of healthier growing economies and duplicate them, like realestate investments. You end up with the built city, but no true economic support for it... is that feasible? obvious? silly?
Bang on, a cargo cult with steel and concrete:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
The Venus Project awaits... Tesla recharging stations coming soon... We know what you want, you don't, so we will give it... Behold...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i94HHGKml9M
Well OK. That didn't work out so well. What next? I got it. Let's build some islands.
Krugmans dream: Chinese erect a giant Mao statue and destroy it immediately.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/08/giant-golden-chairman-mao-s...
Are these really ghost cities?
I couldn't see a single ghost in the photos.
But why ship refugees there?
I say ship the bankers, the politicians and the string pullers there.
We are all ghosts as a species, decoupled from reality. These buildings are mere symbols as echoes of our capacities for symbolism, writ large. They are for us and by us. They fit perfectly.
"Many people's thinking is permeated by state perspectives. One manifestation of this is the unstated identification of states or governments with the people in a country which is embodied in the words 'we' or 'us.' 'We must negotiate sound disarmament treaties.' 'We must renounce first use of nuclear weapons.' Those who make such statements implicitly identify with the state or government in question. It is important to avoid this identification, and to carefully distinguish states from people..." ~ Brian Martin, 'Uprooting War'
China used more concrete in 2014 than the USSA in the entire 20th century. Chinese build for the future while USSA is crumbling around its homeless cast-offs even as Pentacon Kill Industries Inc. is destroying as much of the globe as it can "afford" to using "credit" supplied by the rest of the planet. Do USSANS understand anything at all about their peculiar disease?
It's just the inevitable and long awaited changing of the guard, until a country becomes so corrupt it just collapses. Nothing new, same story from the Roman vomitorium to British public school sodomists and pedophiles.
http://acidcow.com/pics/57928-abandoned-malls-in-the-usa66-pics.html
http://www.deadmalls.com/stories.html
acidcow.com and deadmalls.com = monuments to debt funded consumerism.
Then along came "peak debt".
That is failed distribution of goods. people starving but million tons of food burned worldwide. being king of the castle for a moment - so close but so far away, like dream came true. It is just surreal.
Yes, tragic.
Pripyat 2.0 after nuclear fiat meltdown.
If you ever get to Stockholm, be sure to visit the VASA museum - a MUST for ZH'ers. In the museum is the restored VASA - the ship that sank shortly into its maiden voyage. The requirements had been phoned in by the King of Sweden from afar, and in fact the ship had failed its first stability test (made by sailors running from side to side - the ship almost sank while in dock).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_syndrome
It is a tribute to the sense of humor of the Swedish that they raised the wreck and made a museum out of it.
Ordos is already sort of a museum, but a couple of orders of magnitude bigger than the VASA, but rather of the same vein. All that expensive oil went into the building of this ship of state, and now nothing is left but a museum piece and evergreened debt. So much for Peak Oil. Now how Peak Debt will play out - we will learn in time.
Oh yes, and if the Albertans ever hope for higher oil prices, keep in mind that Rudy G said "Hope is not a strategy." Peak Debt in China is likely to keep their growth dampered down from its firey pace. And there is no other large country emerging from decades of mismanagement - nope Venezuela won't cut it when (and if) they emerge. Therefore oil demand will remain repressed for some time (compared to the "Ordo Years"). And after that the Tar Sands will have to compete with CRISPR engineered bags of Solar Bugs about the lowest cost production of hydrocarbons...
I think they might be bored with global finance. I think it is interesting work.
The benefits of central planning.
Oh hell yeah, fill it up with a couple million sheet head refugees. Let them learn how to act is a closed society for a dozen or so generations, then they'll be ready for western civilization. Go long AK's and ammo, tho.
Hey kid; go live life a little before you shoot your mouth.
Google Earth discounts this story, i see no cranes, buildings seem complete and there are plenty of cars parked around.
Roads look very empty towards outskirts but if you live here theres only inner mongolia outside town.
Its at least half inhabited.
Some really crazy architecture looks like Mars.
This is all part of the housing market in China and its importance should not be underestimated, this is where almost 75% of the country's household wealth is stored and it is deeply interwoven with shadow banking. In China most apartments are sold with internal walls and electrical outlets in place but everything else, including doors, flooring, and bathroom fixtures need to be built-out by the owner after purchase.
Cheap housing is something you won't find in China. Its housing market is among the most expensive in the world when compared to per capita income. For example, the average price of housing in New York City is around $200 per square foot with an average family income of $72,000 per year. By comparison, the average cost of housing in Shanghai for the year 2007 was nearly $108 a sq. ft. against an average family income of $7,316. More about China's housing market in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/12/china-housing-market-customs-tad-bizarre.html
A system that most people don't really understand and is not really for them is a system not worth engaging in or having.
Its really too bad. The Chinese have done some beautiful work there. Not all of it, but a lot of it looks like 21st Century European architecture.
Hardly 'the Chinese' per se, and more a Chinese plutarchy. No real reflection there on or of anything but a soulless few. A callous reflection of nothing.
Welcome to monumental architecture created out of a lack of democracy, out of an imaginary future that will never come, and out of thin air.
"...The map is a simulacrum that, as a model, loses all reference to reality... reality exists only as rotting shreds that are attached to the map, and this is the state of our age according to Baudrillard; that the model, itself, has primacy for us; the real has become irrelevant..." ~ Frances Flannery-Dailey
"Animals don’t do what humans do via speech, namely, make a symbol stand in for the thing. As Tim Ingold puts it, 'they do not impose a conceptual grid on the flow of experience and hence do not encode that experience in symbolic forms.' " ~ John Zerzan