Ghost Cities: Built but Never Inhabited

Civic Data Design Lab, Data, expanding design practices, High Density, Politics and economics, Territory and mobility, Urban Paradigms

China, Cities, City development, Data, Economy, Global Awareness, Housing market, Planetary urbanizations, Politics, Real State, Research, Urban growth, Urban Paradigms, Urban research, Urbanization

Researchers: Shin-bin Tan, Zhekun Xiong, Changping Chen, Michael Foster, Xinhui LI, Xudong Sun, Dalma Foldesi, Amber Guo, Elena Vanz
Project Leaders: Sarah Williams and Wenfei Xu (Project Manager)
Exhibition Curators: Sarah Williams, Wenfei Xu, Chaewon Ahn

Ghost Cities are vacant neighborhoods and sometimes whole cities that were built but were never inhabited. Their existence is a physical manifestation of Chinese overdevelopment in real estate and the dependence on housing as an investment strategy. Little data exists which establishes the location and extent of these Ghost Cities in China. MIT’s Civic Data Design Lab developed a model using data scraped from Chinese social media sites and Baidu (Chinese Google Maps) to create one of the first maps identifying the locations of Chinese Ghost Cities.