Agenda 21s Modern Ghost Cities
Modern “ghost cities” and other vacant “development” projects around the world… are these the result of ‘sustainable communities initiatives’? Many regional planners are calling for ‘workforce housing’ and ‘trains’ and ‘mixed use development’ but the result isn’t always that these things are used or the housing is affordable enough that people can actually move into it. This is happening all over the world where subsidized projects are being done. These examples are eye-openers and should be considered before NH towns jump at ideas that did not come from the needs of the public.
[Note: U.N. membership list: http://www.un.org/en/members/ ]
AFRICA (U.N. member)
[Video] Angola’s ‘ghost city’ | CNN | 11/3/2012 [2:54 minutes]
Why has China built a ghost town in Africa? | Mail Online | 7/4/2012
Eerie footage shows brand new Angolan city designed for 500,000 lying empty
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2168507/Footage-shows-brand-new-Angolan-city-designed-500-000-lying-empty.html
Angola’s Chinese-built ghost town | Louise Redvers | BBC | 7/2/2012
The ghost towns of China, Ireland and Spain – full of large empty house estates – may be a phenomenon that is on its way to Africa.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18646243
CANADA (U.N. member)
Canada Condo Boom Could End With Ghettos, Ghost Towns, Some Analysts Fear
by Daniel Tencer | The Huffington Post Canada | 5/9/12
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/09/canada-condo-bubble-boom-ghost-towns_n_1500959.html
FRANCE (U.N. member)
Could France’s empty office buildings ease its homeless crisis?
Kyle G. Brown | CS Monitor | 2/1/2013
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2013/0201/Could-France-s-empty-office-buildings-ease-its-homeless-crisis
Excerpts: “Sitting idle alongside the homeless is a staggering number of empty buildings across the country. More than 2 million properties were vacant in 2012”
“The government has identified 120 vacant buildings in and around Paris, and is conducting ‘technical visits’ to assess whether the properties are inhabitable.”
IRELAND (U.N. member)
Ireland Bulldozes Ghost Estate in Life After Real Estate Bubble
Finbarr Flynn | Bloomberg | 7/19/2012
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-19/ireland-bulldozes-ghost-estate-in-life-after-real-estate-bubble.html
Excerpt: “About 1,850 housing developments, unfinished after the bubble burst in 2008, pockmark the Irish landscape, according to government figures. This week, Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency, the state agency set up in 2009 to purge banks of their most toxic commercial property loans, started the destruction of an apartment block for the first time.”
[Video] Ireland The Rise and Fall of the Economy, Real Estate, Development | Uploaded 3/2/11
Description: “Documentary of the boom years in Ireland and the U.K, and the rapid collapse of the economy, which hit the construction/development industry across the country, leaving thousands of premium houses unoccupied or semi-built. Billions of pounds were lost and individual property developers/agents were left with tens of millions of pounds of debt, and home seekers were given cheap mortgages which have since been lost or repossessed due to high unemployment when the indusry collapsed…”
NETHERLANDS (U.N. member)
The Dutch office market faces the highest vacancy rate in Europe
Judi Seebus | PropertyEU Magazine | May 2012
http://www.propertyeu.info/peu_storage_root/PEU12-MA04-038-COVERSTORY.pdf
SPAIN (U.N. member)
Eerily empty streets of the Spanish ghost town
[Ciudad Valdeluz] built for 30,000 before property crash
Sarah Johnson | Daily Mail | 9/14/2012 Updated 11/26/2012
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2203278/Empty-streets-playgrounds-Spanish-ghost-town-built-property-crash.html
Spain’s ghost airport: The 1BILLION [Ciudad Real] transport hub closed after just three years that’s now falling into rack and ruin | by Lee Moran | Mail Online | 7/9/2012
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2170886/Spains-ghost-airport-The-1BILLION-transport-hub-closed-just-years-thats-falling-rack-ruin.html
Spain Ghost Towns Develop From Real Estate Crash (PHOTOS) | Huffington Post | 2/16/2012
Spain’s real estate crash and economic implosion have turned what was supposed to become a vibrant suburban paradise for young Spanish couples and their children into one of the most visible monuments of the country’s boom gone bust. Such modern-day ghost towns have become a familiar part of the Spanish landscape, abandoned shells left to slowly decay.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/spain-ghost-towns-real-estate-crash_n_1281032.html
Spain’s Vacant Airport Typifies European Woes | Marc Herman | Pacific Standard | 11/18/2011
Spain’s Castellon Airport can’t seem to get off the ground. After 15 years and millions of dollars spent, there it sits — empty — exemplifying the sort of thoughtless spending that contributed to the current European economic distress. (Marc Herman and Andrés Bartos)
‘Modern Ruins – A Topography of Profit’ highlights ‘the destructive environmental impact of the policies that promote global financial speculation’ | Architecture Today, Jan. 3, 2013
Unfinished and deserted tourist and residential complexes have transformed coastline regions and penetrated into Spain’s interior provinces. Schulz-Dornburg’s photographs record 60 locations that were inspected on a 10,000km journey, and are provocatively shown alongside promotional materials, satellite images and site plans to highlight the interdependency between reality and fiction.
http://www.architecturetoday.co.uk/?p=27918
[Video] Spain is Dying | Uploaded 3/12/2010
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTZetoIUUbQ
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=871vHYEHTiw
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9DliqJ0jHM
[Video] Spain: Paradise Lost (Cantoria Edition) | Uploaded 7/23/2009
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0Tg0IiCPhA
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (U.N. member)
[DUBAI] The 6 Most Mind-Blowing Modern Ghost Towns | by Xavier Jackson | 1/6/2012
Scroll down to “#5 A Giang Archipelago (Shaped Like the World)”
http://www.cracked.com/article_19617_the-6-most-mind-blowing-modern-ghost-towns.html
The dark side of Dubai | by Johann Hari | The Independent | 4/7/2009
Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
UNITED KINGDOM (U.N. member)
[England] Plan for small businesses to take over empty government buildings ‘failing’
Treasury official reveals not a single building has been occupied since project was announced by the prime minister a year ago | by Rajeev Syal | The Guardian | 2/15/2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/15/businesses-empty-buildings-plan-failing
[England] Turning offices into affordable housing sounds good, but who really benefits? by Michele Hanson | The Guardian | 2/25/2013
Housing space is worth around three times as much as office space . . .
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/feb/26/offices-affordable-housing-who-benefits
Excerpt: “Empty office space in the City of London almost doubled to 10% between 2008 and 2009, while 17% of offices in Birmingham are empty, a fun area for vandals and arsonists.”
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (U.N. member)
(Please send links if you have any other U.S. examples)
American Ghost Towns Of The 21st Century | 3/27/2011
http://247wallst.com/2011/03/27/american-ghost-towns-of-the-21st-century/2/
Includes:
Lake County, Michigan http://www.lakecountyil.gov/ABOUTOURCOUNTY/SUSTAIN/Pages/Default.aspx
Vilas County Wisconsin
Summit County, Colorado http://www.co.summit.ut.us/sustainability/index.php
Worcester County, Maryland http://stopagenda21maryland.org/?p=172
Mono County, California http://www.basicgov.com/sites/default/files/case-study/BasicGov_Customer_MonoandMammothLake_June2012.pdf
Dare County, North Carolina http://truthordarenc.com/dare-county-board-of-commissioners-passes-anti-agenda-21-resolution/
Dukes County, Massachusetts http://www.mvcommission.org/doc.php/UPWP%20-%202008-2009.pdf?id=1973
Sawyer County, Wisconsin http://www.sawyercountygov.org/Information/SummitOutline2005/Economic2005Summary/tabid/164/Default.aspx
Burnett County, Wisconsin http://www.burnettcounty.com/DocumentCenter/Home/View/164
Aitkin County, Minnesota http://www.co.aitkin.mn.us/Departments/Enviro-Svcs/Comprehensive-Land-Use-Plan.html
(Be sure to look at all three webpages connected to this article)
MORE ON CHINA (U.N. member)
Scary New Satellite Pictures Of China’s Ghost Cities
Gus Lubin and Mamta Badkar | Business Insider | 3/5/2013
http://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-pictures-of-chinese-ghost-cities-2013-3?op=1#ixzz2MvmiMmNf
The Inevitable Result of Central Planning: China’s Ghost Cities and Malls | Israel Curtis | 4/10/11
http://archive.mises.org/16436/the-inevitable-result-of-central-planning-chinas-ghost-cities-and-malls/
Lanzhou “New Area” set up to create environmentally sustainable economy | CCTV.com | 9/7/2012
http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20120907/102472.shtml
[VIDEO] http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20120907/102934.shtml
Welcome to the deserted German city outside of Shanghai
“This may look like your average German suburb on a quiet day, but it’s actually a planned community 30 kilometers outside of Shanghai. This is Anting German Town, a one-square-kilometer residential development founded in 2001 and built specifically to resemble a little slice of Deutschland. There’s only one problem for this quirky Teutonic oasis —nobody wants to live there.”
http://io9.com/5850214/welcome-to-the-deserted-german-city-outside-of-shanghai
China’s ghost towns and phantom malls
| by Robin Banerji & Patrick Jackson | BBC News | 8/13/2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19049254
China’s Ghost Cities and Malls
Documentary by SBS Dateline (Australian TV) about the Chinese real estate market.
NORTH KOREA
This is off-topic, but sort of related . . . and worth watching for anyone interested in what the environment is like in this communist city:
[Video] Morning in Pyongyang, North Korea. Very eerie. Published 6/25/12
http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/04/north-korea-pyongyang-video/
“The scene is further enhanced by the backdrop of chilling classical music that is piped through a speaker system and broadcast live around the city, which also airs patriotic songs and public service announcements alerting people to be on the look out for spies or traitors.” (Quote ref. from an article: http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/04/north-korea-pyongyang-video/ )
MISCELLANEOUS
Global housing bubbles unite: How easy debt has created the first ever worldwide housing boom and bust. The busted, the leveled, and the booming.
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/global-housing-bubbles-real-estate-bubbles-canada-spain-ireland-us/
Archive for the ‘global housing bubbles’ Category
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/category/global-housing-bubbles/
H/T to D. Niwa – 3/14/2013