Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/31/this-2000-foot-skyscraper-is-completely-abandoned.html
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My wife keeps going on that we should pool together our resources with some friends and purchase an apartment building for us all to retire in… This would be pretty crazy to live in. Minus the China part.
I’ll go back to looking at the equally crazy villages in Italy for sale.
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No-one does late-stage capitalism at scale like the People’s Republic of China.
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Ugh. We have one of these in Los Angeles. Oceanwide Plaza stopped construction in 2019 when Chinese financing fell through. If they turn out having to scrap it, they’ll have to tear it down by hand floor-by-floor since the neighborhood is too dense for an explosive demolition.
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“It was like attempting to build New York’s Hudson Yards on the outskirts of Philadelphia,”
Spoken like a person who’s never heard of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. 
Give it 20 years, and those investment figures might not be too far apart. 
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Some one in China is a fan of JG Ballard?
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I lived in Bangkok for a few months in 2004 and the city was still littered with half-finished high rise developments. They’d all been started in the mid-1990s and then the 1997 Asian financial crisis came along and wiped everyone out. They gave bits of the city a weirdly post-apocalyptic vibe (especially because I think one or two were being tentatively squatted).
Probably the dumbest failed high-rise development I’ve ever seen is the Hôtel Châteauneuf, an unfinished 18-story hotel in Oran, Algeria. The developer built this monstrosity on the grounds of the Palace of the Bey, one of Oran’s historic attractions … despite the fact that they didn’t have permission to do so. Eventually, someone in the government woke up and put a stop to the project, so now it’s just an empty concrete skeleton looming over the palace. Supposedly the local government has taken it over and is going to turn it into offices, but they’ve been talking about doing that for more than 12 years and it hasn’t happened yet.
See photo below. The views from the top are probably great, so I did think about climbing it. In the end I chickened out though, because the stairs didn’t look to be in great shape.
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Then there’s the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea, which is evidently now being used a giant electronic billboard.
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across the street from Crypto.com Arena
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Hey, what ever happened to the ol Millenium tower?
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/millennium-tower-san-francisco-price-drop-19582654.php (“unit got listed at 649,000”…)
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600 m = 1968.504 ft.
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There must be a timeline where this is Trump Tower Pyongyang.
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that reminds me of the intel building which sat abandoned on prime real estate in downtown austin for nearly a decade until the city paid intel to buy it, and demolish it for a court house
it’s like the entire state of texas temporarily forgot about the concept of eminent domain. something something something tax credits and liquor, i’m sure
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When work on the Ryugyong Hotel began, the North Korean government suggested that foreign investors would be able to open nightclubs or even casinos.
ETA: There are casinos in some other Pyongyang hotels.
Then there’s a hotel and casino in the Rason Special Economic Zone on the Chinese border, built to attract Chinese gamblers.
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Why not this timeline? Donald Trump was already pretty friendly with Kim Jong-Un during his first term. If he gets elected again, maybe he’ll use his negotiating power to secure a sweetheart deal for the Trump Organization.
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Was.
Which of course may change again.
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The graffiti high-rises. Complete embarrassments.
These monuments to failure are everywhere. I’ll add the moldering unfinished hotels/condos near Jaco, Costa Rica. They’re visible from the highway as you drive down the Pacific coast.
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Buh buh buh buh but I was told that capitalism is the most efficient way of allocating resources!
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Wish someone would accidentally build a 117 floors of housing in my town. Probably could get 10 good sized apartments per floor. That’s 1000+ apartments, perhaps homes for 2500 people. Plus a few floors for shopping. Giving some of the disabled or elderly residence a place nearby to work or shop for essentials. And negating some of the disadvantages of living in a high-rise.
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