Kunming, Tianjin, Ordos . . . add Linyi to the list
October 19, 2010
Today’s New York Times had an article about Ordos in Inner Mongolia and the local government’s efforts to build a brand new city about 15 miles south of the old city. Reading the article, I was struck by how similar Ordos’ expansion appears to what is happening in Linyi. North of the Benghe River, the local government has embarked constructing a new city from scratch. New luxury towers and villas have sprung up on what was once farmland for as far as the eye can see. Like in Ordos, the first tenant in this new “city” will be the local government, who is moving its offices from the old city around People’s Square (人民广成) to the new city north of the river. Residents are presumably the next to follow. The NYT article does a good job aggregating what I have been saying in my posts about Linyi and its many splendid towers with no one living in them. While its amazing that a government can harness so many resources to build a new city entirely from scratch, the wonders of today’s state-driven capitalism can easily turn into tomorrow’s follies. Only time will tell.
View of Linyi's new city north of Benghe
