Tim Sprinkle

China’s ‘Empty City’ of Ordos

Ever wonder what China's real estate bubble looks like on the ground? The WSJ has a piece today on the city of Ordos, located in a coal-rich part of Inner Mongolia. The idea, as far as I know, was to expand on the existing city to keep the area's commodity income close to home and attract new workers. Good idea, but the "new town" is so far away from the "old town" that no one wants to move there.

Reminds me a little of Brazil's capital city, Brasilia, which was created out of essentially nothing in just 4 years in the late 1950s. The difference there, of course, is that Brasilia attracted all sorts of new residents and now boasts a population of over 20 million.