A Walk Through The World’s Biggest Ghost Town

Still, Ordos isn’t close to meeting its capacity.

Olivier attributes the city’s spectacular failure to the government’s “build it and the people will come” attitude. It represents a pervasive problem in China, where officials hope to more than double the country’s urban population by 2020.

Cities like Ordos spring from rural areas to accommodate the masses — but the masses don’t always come. “This phenomenon is really a cancer for the development of this country,” Olivier said, “and a serious threat to the Chinese economy.”