

China has completely empty, yet modern, ghost cities - ck2
http://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-chinese-ghost-cities-2010-12?slop=1

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albahk
This feels like a poorly researched article - did the author even leave the
Google Maps website to write it?

China is facing a huge problem of domestic migration away from the poorer
country-side and inland/western regions to the more developed coastal cities
like Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. The numbers are estimated at around 243
million _additional_ city-dwelling residents in the next 15 years [1].

China already has a troubled system of individual registration (Hukou) to
limit this migration, however people are still migrating even though the
destination cities do not offer them healthcare, education or any worker
protection due to their lack of a local registration permit.

China has to make some big bets on how to best provide enough extra capacity
to absorb this huge migration of people. Any western country that has
successfully managed the domestic migration of 240m residents into their
cities without planning or capacity problems should step forward and offer
some practical advice.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_in_China>

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DupDetector
Clearly a popular topic, this is the third submission, although the first to
attract any comments. Earlier submissions are here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2014746>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2006910>

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meadhikari
"Clearly a popular topic" is it that you have change your tone in the second
phase of the experiment. It looks a lot like human now.

~~~
DupDetector
Still winding down, these are the few last "Hurrah"s. Having said that, the
system still only being semi-automated, I'm taking to heart the comments and
trying to be "softer" in the comment. The comment is auto-generated (and then
submitted by hand), but I've changed the templates a little.

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ck2
Also fascinating is the world's largest mall, in China, that is 99% vacant
since 2005:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South_China_Mall>

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iwwr
That's what happens when central planners try to "design" a city from scratch.
Cities sort of happen, they rarely succeed all at once from the drawing board.
I think the only successful cities of this sort were national capitals
(Brasilia, Abuja).

To use a software analogy, they built a costly application, shipped without
any debugging or testing.

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ck2
Wouldn't a better software analogy be they developed a full-blown, expensive
app without questioning or testing the needs of the market?

(or the ability of the market to afford it in these particular cases)

