If there are two stories guaranteed to get an astonished and appalled readership, one is the ruins of Detroit, the other is China’s abandoned or unoccupied new cities. io9 assembles a collection of the latter.
China’s building boom has created a ton of abandoned cities and massive ruins — most of which are brand new, and have never had people living in them. Here are the deserted Chinese cities, mostly built in the last 10 years, which could be sets for your next dystopian movie.
Like this abandoned villa district in Zhangmutou, Guangdong Province:
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Or Chenggong District, Kunming, Yunnan Province, where less than 10 percent of the buildings are occupied:
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Here’s a video of skateboarders riding through Kangbashi New Area, an empty district of Ordos in Inner Manchuria, built for a million and occupied by a few thousand.
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And another of Wonderland Amusement Park, 20 miles outside of Beijing in Chenzhuang Village (never opened, construction stopped):
http://vimeo.com/26294923#
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HUH! Abandoned! They were never occupied . . .
This video illustrates how contemporary architecture (I hesitate to use that now disgraced, appellation, disgraced by the practitioners themselves: especially the local Honey Boo Boos) has degenerated into isolated blobs of non-descript chaos.
Where is the special recognition of the party wall: i.e. San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane Rome, or indeed the urban space building streets of last century Vancouver.
Is the isolated, Honey Boo Boo ((obese, bloated, ugly, self-trivializing) blob the best our troubled architectural (I use the term reluctantly to describe the current gray stump makers) imposters can come up with?
And we seem oh so willing to accept this only-good-for-skateboarders here!
Shame: we are so gullible!
“Concrete is the new marble!” NOT!
Man, those skateboarders are good!
Strangely those houses look a lot like the garbage being built in Richmond…