Have You Hugged a Concrete Pillar Today?

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22 points·locusm··6 comments

A lot of China's construction efforts are due to the government's affinity for infrastructure projects that inflate GDP. The result are these ghost towns, because the cost of a newly built apartment is much, much higher than most Chinese can afford. [1]

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPILhiTJv7E

For a chart of concrete consumption per capita vs. GDP per capita:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-21/chinas-ghost-cities...

These 'ghost towns' will still be there in 10 years and the buildings will still be valuable. Eventually they'll get used. The 'ghost town' problem is overstated.

“No question, there are towns (some city-like) with empty buildings for the world to see. And, there certainly have been cases of poor planning and overbuilding. But as my team and I travelled around China, it was clear to us that those represent a small sample of projects and not the country as a whole.”

-- Mark Mobius

The famous 'ghost town' of Ordos has actually been sold out. The Chinese are actually buying extra housing instead of keeping their money in banks. Source: http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/asia/ordos-boom-town-ghost-t... Source 2: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/business/global/20ghost.ht...

The level of construction is astonishing, made clear in this comparison of Shanghai over 10 years. http://www.penmachine.com/2011/01/vancouver-and-shanghai-gro...

Interesting enough, but can someone explain the title. I assume it is some reference to tree hugging but I don't get it.

Hey, I just read the post. I noticed that the share icon which appears on the left is actually the IOS/OSX one.

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