China’s Phantom Urbanisation and the Pathology of Ghost Cities

Sorace, Christian; Hurst, William

doi:10.1080/00472336.2015.1115532

Cited by 99 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…A ghost city usually refers to real estate built in rural areas that have since been deserted and are characterized by many vacant buildings and a dimly lit area over a considerable amount of time, i.e., several years. This phenomenon highlights the low efficiency of land development in terms of both economy and environment, considering that the creation of infrastructure outpaced the population size, subsequently causing a loss of arable land [22,57].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing the Relationship between Developed Land Area and Nighttime Light Emissions of 36 Chinese Cities

Li²,

Yang

et al. 2018

Remote Sensing

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The satellite-observed nighttime light emission (NTLE) data provide a new method for scrutinizing the footprint of human settlements. Changing NTLEs can be attributed to the direct/ indirect influences of highly complex factors that are beyond the ability of simple statistical models to distinguish. Besides, the relatively coarse resolution of the NTLE products combined with light from human settlements may produce misleading results, as the relationship between spatiotemporal heterogeneity in the growth of developed land (e.g., urban and rural residences, shopping centers, industrial parks, mining plants, and transportation facilities) and the associated NTLEs has not been adequately analyzed. In this study, we developed a total nighttime brightness index (TotalNTBI) to measure the NTLEs with the defense meteorological satellite program/operational linescan system (DMSP/OLS) nighttime light data enhanced by sharpening the edges of the pixels. Thirty-six key cities in China were selected to investigate the relationship between the total developed land area and the associated TotalNTBI from 2000 to 2013 using panel regression and a simplified structural equation model (SEM). The results show that the overall trend in TotalNTBI agreed well with that of the total developed land area (mean adjusted R 2 = 0.799). The panel regression models explained approximately 71.8% of the variance of total developed land area and 92.4% of the variance in TotalNTBI. The SEM revealed both the direct and indirect influences of independent variables on the total developed land area and the associated TotalNTBI. This study may provide useful information for decision-makers and researchers engaged in sustainable land development, urban management, and regional developmental inequality, focusing on recent issues, such as retrospective analysis of human footprint with sharpened nighttime NTLE products, the loss of natural and semi-natural land due to the sprawling developed land area indicated by intensively lit area, and the low efficiency of land development indicated by the anomalies of developed land area and associated NTBIs. global change, as the role of humans will affect the earth's future [2,3] and eventually determine the fate of human society.Compared with the conventional census approach with its shortcomings of data scarcity, bias, and uncertainty, the remote sensing of nighttime light emissions (NTLEs) provides a new view method for scrutinizing the footprint of human activities. Nighttime light emissions signals captured by on-board sensors, such as those onboard the defense meteorological satellite program/operational linescan system (DMSP/OLS) in 1992-2013 and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) since 2012, have accumulated 26 years of nighttime light data. Together with survey and census data, archived nighttime light data effectively reflects the trajectory of human settlements associated with socioeconomic evolution, with a focus on population estimation [4,5], monitoring urban expansion and peri-urb...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing the Relationship between Developed Land Area and Nighttime Light Emissions of 36 Chinese Cities

Li²,

Yang

et al. 2018

Remote Sensing

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“…We follow the prophetic guide into the Inferno, but we do not come out the same. (Sorace and Hurst 2016). For some China watchers, it is a portent of the inevitable bursting of China's real estate bubble inflated by political incentives and speculative land development.…”

Section: Dispelling the Misconceptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disturbances in Heaven

Franceschini¹,

Lin²,

Loubere³

2017

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“… A recent exception to these binary temporalities of modernity, and a useful counterposition to modern ruins, can be seen in recent geographical attention to the “ruins” produced by hypermobile and financialised capital. See, for example, Woodworth and Wallace (), Sorace and Hurst () on “ghost cities” in China, and O'Callaghan et al. () and Kitchin et al.…”

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confidence: 99%

Decommissioned places: Ruins, endurance and care at the end of the first nuclear age

Dawney

2019

Trans Inst British Geog

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This paper argues for a geography of deindustrialising places as spaces of inhabitation and endurance, rather than one based on narratives of progres, decline and ruination. Ruins have long been a concern for geographers, yet the material remains of modernity's grand schemes feed easily into ways of seeing and knowing deindustrialised spaces that can efface the practices through which lives and worlds are made in the present. Drawing on fieldwork in the former Soviet atomgrad of Visaginas, Lithuania, the paper both acknowledges and pulls back from the draw of the ruin. Moving away from the ruin‐temporalities of progress and decline, it offers an account of ongoing practices and modes of habitation in spaces defined by ruination. A reflexive acknowledgement of our contaminated role in making sense of such spaces allows us to be both enchanted by grand narratives of hubris and decline and to see other stories – stories of living on, of endurance, and of making lives in places circumscribed as futureless by political and economic regimes. As such, the paper offers an alternative geography of places that are decommissioned from above, paying attention to the care, commitment, makeshift practices and aesthetic projects through which their inhabitants live on. Engaging this approach through a series of small stories based on ethnographic and collaborative fieldwork alongside two photographers in Visaginas, I posit that the material and subjective remains of the dreams of the first nuclear age give rise to emergent forms of life that stand in excess to narratives of progress and decline. The ruins of Soviet nuclear modernity here operate as containers for practices of endurance and living on through changing relations of power and capital, rather than objects of melancholic loss, and as raw materials through which to forge ways of living in spaces characterised as surplus to requirement.

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China’s Phantom Urbanisation and the Pathology of Ghost Cities

Cited by 99 publications

References 18 publications

Analyzing the Relationship between Developed Land Area and Nighttime Light Emissions of 36 Chinese Cities

Analyzing the Relationship between Developed Land Area and Nighttime Light Emissions of 36 Chinese Cities

Disturbances in Heaven

Decommissioned places: Ruins, endurance and care at the end of the first nuclear age

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