I don’t know if you guys are aware of this strange phenomenon, but China has, for some unknown reason, built several sprawling cities in the most remote sections of their country.  That part isn’t that strange by most standards:  America has several out of the way locations that house resort towns, getaways, summer homes.  We in America love to inhabit the harshest terrain that we can.  The VERY unsettling part is that these ready-made cities, built for 1.5-3 million people, are COMPLETELY EMPTY.  Check out this article in TIME on one such city Ordos.  It has pictures that look like something from Chernobyl.  The difference is that Chernobyl was EVACUATED.  These cities never had people to begin with.  This goes against everything I have come to believe about the evolution of cities.

If you take a look at all the major cities in the US, you see that each one grew around a need that was filled:  Detroit with cars, Los Angeles with the movie industry, Pittsburgh with Stelle.  Look at the port towns of New Orleans, Boston and New York.  With a large influx of people, there is an increased need to build more stuff (apartments, homes, shops, buildings, etc.)  That is the natural progression of city evolution.  So that begs the question:  Why is China continuing to build cities they don’t need?

Let’s take a look at the latest building project.  Basically they are going to level a mountain range in the desert to build a city that can house 3.6 million people…from scratch.  One there is one more problem:  no local water source.  Maybe they can take a page out of LA’s book, and hijack a major river.  This is a 2.2 billion dollar investment and yet, they haven’t filled ten’s of cities they have built previously.  So why do they have them, and what are they going to do with them?  You would think that with a country of one billion people, they could find 1 percent of their population willing to move into a brand new city.

There is one conspiracy theory that has been circling the internet that may answer those questions:  Fukushima.  The plant is still spewing radiation.  The cores are still melting down.  It is literally only a matter of time until Japan is uninhabitable or the population is wiped out.  The rumor is China has offered to move the population of Japan into these ready-made cities.  Given the history between these two countries that has spanned several thousand years, I find it hard to believe China would welcome their age old enemy into their backyard.

Who really knows.  All I know is that these cities are real, and it’s totally weird.