While it may not be surprising that some enterprising developers in China, the blessed land where all manner of bonkers and over-ambitious projects break ground, have decided to appropriate the architectural tropes of a centuries-old city 5,760 miles away, it doesn't make the fact that Tianducheng, an elaborate—the gaslamps! the Juliet balconies! the fountains! the cornices! the Eiffel Tower!—fake Paris near Hangzhou boasts an absurdly high hair-raising quotient not helped by the fact that it's, well, fairly desolate. It's like seeing Disneyland without crowds, or, for that matter, Ikea without screaming children/hordes of angry, confused people.
Having broke ground in 2007, Tianducheng has not lured in as many buyers as once hoped: "Surrounded by a confusing mix of farmland and wide, abruptly ending roads, Tianducheng is now considered by local media to be a ghost town, its population well short of the 10,000 it can support," The Atlantic Cities writes. It all makes one wonder what sort of future is in store for China's other planned pop-up cities—or its other fake European city, a clone of Hallstatt, Austria, for that matter. Anyway, see the empty streets, miniature (about 300 feet tall) tower, and fake Champs Elysèes in the video below.
Tianducheng from caspar stracke on Vimeo.
· Glimpse the Absurd Parisian Ghost Town in the Middle of China [The Atlantic Cities]
· All China development coverage [Curbed National]
· All Abandonment Issues posts [Curbed National]
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