I'm feeling pedantic today, so enjoy a little geography lesson:

"Ordos City" is more like a province or prefecture, spanning an area the size of South Carolina or Azerbaijan and having multiple cities of similar sizes. Much of China is like this, "prefecture-level cities" that also have "county-level cities" beneath them.

The "ghost city" isn't Ordos as a whole but the Kangbashi New Area, which was planned for a population of 300,000 and had an estimated population of 153,000 in 2017, according to Wade Shepard in Forbes .

The photo in the OP is from Dongsheng, the biggest city in Ordos whose population is 572,000 and which had the seat of government before it moved to Kangbashi. Fortunately, Kangbashi looks similar so it's not a big deal, here's a photo of it:

So that's where the spectre of communism lives.

China has solved the housing crisis, but at what cost?

watching these redditors jerkin at each other kinda gives me ptsd. i was inured when i waded thru reddit daily but the baseline animosity and smug ignorance drippin offa every comment's just too much to bear anymore

reminds me how lucky i am to have found this place at least

TIL 2.1 million is a “ghost city”.

Like if we were also comparing between how many people are in both China (1,412,175,000) and Burgerland(340,110,998)…this city is roughly as populated as Atlanta is in relation to overall population. This is hardly a yeehaw podunk town. Not the biggest but not the smallest either.

why the fuck did they design a highway median that could be seen from fucking space

Ngl that design is really bad cuz car centric

Yeah, 2.1 million GHOSTS! Bet you're scared of China now!

I can't tell what the split on that arterial is. Is that a protected pedestrian/bike lane or dedicated public transit lane? It seems like the 6 lanes on the left are for cars. The right lane on the other side of the huge grass median is for what? There is that nice park/green space as a buffer between the commercial center and the arterial but the only pedestrian connectivity seems to be sidewalks? I wonder if there are any tunnels between the residence area and that green space. There don't seem to be any bridges. Though the residences seem to have some mixed use so maybe it's not all bad if you can still get to the amenities you need without crossing a 6 lane road. Crossing that 8 lane seems like a nightmare for abuela.

I wonder if they would ever encroach on that green space for a highway. That whole band seems like leaving room for future expansion. It would suck to grow up with that park and then lose it to a highway. Even at the intersection it looks like they left room for an interchange.

Americans looking at a city that is at worst a little bit boring looking: Americans when 80% of the land area is not parking lots: Americans when the land area that is not parking lots also isn't only insurance office buildings: Americans when multi-unit housing: Americans when people don't live in little bungalow theme parks that can only be accessed by privately owned cars:

Look at this Urban Hellscape

Maybe I'm silly, but it kind of looks like a lategame city-builder city, to an extent that I usually don't think of cities as looking like. I guess it's just because of how it looks like it was so heavily planned.