How To Build a City: An economic essay about planned cities

The saying, “If you build it, they will come,” doesn’t hold true for Chinese ghost cities. In the past decade, China has built more than 50 cities in hopes of doubling its population. But, building a city takes a lot more planning than playing with legos. Just because the city is built, doesn’t mean that it will be functional, productive and filled with the expected population. In this paper, I look at the Chinese National Plan on New Urbanization, which sets in place the expected growth, the economics behind China’s urbanization plan, compare China’s ghost cities to other successful planned cities and offer recommendations based on my research findings.