Entire cities in China remain uninhabited and pollute the environment

Over the past half century, China has built about 500 new cities, some of them remain uninhabited and seriously pollute the environment.

As of 2021, over 17% of urban buildings built in the last 20 years remained unoccupied. Although official data on this issue is not publicly available, these numbers have undoubtedly continued to grow since 2021.

According to some estimates, there are currently between 20 and 65 million residential buildings remain unoccupied. The results of a new study published in the journal Nature Communications indicate that in total, empty homes emit 55.81 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, which is 6.9% of the total emissions from China’s housing stock. This is higher than in countries such as Portugal and Mongolia.

Economic growth and large-scale urbanization once helped China become the world’s second largest economy. Between 2001 and 2020, the country built 11.47 billion square meters of urban living space, which is almost half of the total worldwide for this period.

The vast majority of new homes were located in urban areas, as the country’s leadership sought to relocate residents from rural areas. This triggered a rapid increase in real estate investment and a trend where homeowners began to view their homes more as assets than as places to live.

This had already happened in the United States before the 2008 financial crisis and in Japan in the 1980s. Speculative investments contributed to the appearance of large bubbles, which subsequently burst, leaving behind the consequences of large-scale economic shocks.

In a new study, researchers from the University of Tsinghua in Beijing Hefang Zheng and his colleagues looked at the environmental impact of a large number of unoccupied houses. The carbon footprint of these houses has at least 2 permanent sources.

The cement, steel and other building materials used in the construction of these homes account for the vast majority of the pollution that is released into the environment. Each square meter of new housing releases hundreds of kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Heat is another source of pollution. Even if no one lives in these buildings, many of them consume energy. In northern China, centralized heating systems operate throughout the city. A large number of unoccupied houses remain connected to the heating system, consuming large amounts of energy. During 2020, these empty homes produced as much carbon dioxide as an entire medium-sized country.

This is not based on confirmed official data. Instead, the researchers developed their own system based on deep training for the purpose of volume assessment of unused housing in urban areas of China.

The authors of the study collected data from a major online housing listing platform and analyzed 1.2 million real estate listings in 56 major Chinese cities between 2020 and 2021. They used algorithm ResNet-50 deep learning engine and classified the properties as inhabited or uninhabited based on photos of the premises uploaded by sellers, separating fully furnished, partially furnished and completely empty houses.

To refine their estimates, they adjusted potential shifts, among other things, differences in the probability of sale between occupied and unoccupied houses. The research found that as of the beginning of 2021, 17.4% of all houses built between 2001 and 2018 remained unoccupied.

China is far from the only country facing a crisis with a large number of uninhabited houses. Many countries are trying to solve the problem of large construction volumes and low demand for new real estate. In the United States, the overall level of built and unsold residential real estate is about 11-12%. Millions of homes remain empty in Japan, due to the worsening demographic crisis and reduced demand for real estate in rural areas.

In a number of European countries, such as Spain and Italy, there is a large amount of secondary residential real estate that is idle most of the time throughout the year. The situation in China, however, is quite different, as most of the unoccupied housing in the country was built quite recently. In China, this problem has arisen as a result of excessive construction rates. In addition, the Chinese economy needs to continue construction because scale of urbanization continue to grow.

The large amount of unused housing in China is the result of a combination of political incentives, economic speculation, and inconsistent urban planning. In particular, some investments appear to have been misguided.

The largest number of unoccupied homes is in small cities, while in Beijing and Shanghai the number of vacant homes is in the single digits. Meanwhile, in cities such as, Xi’an and Chongqing, about a quarter of residential real estate remains empty.

If China’s leadership is committed to reducing emissions, reducing unoccupied housing should be a priority. The authors of the study emphasize that the simplest option is to introduce a tax on unused real estate. This would prevent homeowners from using their homes for speculative purposes and force them to either rent them out or put them up for sale.

Some cities could offer incentives to convert apartments into affordable housing or public rental units. However, this seems more difficult. In any case, if China is to reduce its pollution, it must address the problem of a large number of vacant homes.

The study was published in the journal Nature

Source: ZMEScience