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From New Town to 'Ghost Town': Lessons from the Cases in Yangtze River Delta

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  • Li, Meiqing

Abstract

As the claim of many ‘ghost towns’ emerged in China since 2000s, it has aroused increasing social-economic concerns as well as governmental policy responses to ‘destock’ and refrain from the development of new towns and new districts at local level. This dissertation contains an exploratory study that aims to clarify the concept of ghost town by making typological generalization from historical cases. It then specifies the scope of China’s emerging ‘ghost towns’ as those originated from unsuccessful new town development projects featured by highly vacant properties. With a focus on cities in Yangtze River Delta region, it examines the general context of YRD in terms of population growth, urban and economic development. Illustrated by the empirical analysis of two representative cases of Wujin District in Changzhou and Tianducheng in Hangzhou, it argues that inappropriate development strategies as well as underlying institutional arrangement towards neoliberal capitalism fosters such ‘ghost town’ phenomenon. While the situation can possibly be rectified, lessons and implications are twofold: under decentralization, new town development strategy should be differentiated based on city positioning; and under privatization, mega city development is not going to work successfully by solely relying on the private sector.

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  • Li, Meiqing, 2016. "From New Town to 'Ghost Town': Lessons from the Cases in Yangtze River Delta," SocArXiv 6fhdn, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:6fhdn
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/6fhdn
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Si-Ming Li, 2012. "Housing Inequalities under Market Deepening: The Case of Guangzhou, China," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(12), pages 2852-2866, December.
    2. Hao Chen & Qiyan Wu & Jianquan Cheng & Zhifei Ma & Weixuan Song, 2015. "Scaling-up Strategy as an Appropriate Approach for Sustainable New Town Development? Lessons from Wujin, Changzhou, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(5), pages 1-23, May.
    3. Robert E. Dickinson, 1948. "The Scope and Status of Urban Geography: An Assessment," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 24(3), pages 221-238.
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