The Rising Burden of Unfinished Urbanization

Bich Ha Nguyen

Dai Nam University, Hanoi 100000, Vietnam

*Contact: hanb@dainam.edu.vn

© Wix

Cities are expanding at unprecedented speed. By 2050, the United Nations projects that nearly 68% of the global population will live in urban areas, adding roughly 2.5 billion new city residents (He et al., 2021). Accommodating this growth requires enormous quantities of buildings, roads, and infrastructure. Urban development is therefore often viewed as a symbol of progress, economic growth, and improved living standards. Yet beneath the promise of urban expansion lies a less visible question: what happens when cities build more than they can actually use?

China provides one of the most striking examples of both the power and the risks of rapid urbanization. Between 1980 and 2023, China’s urban population increased from 191 million to 933 million people (NBSC, 2024). Over the same period, cities transformed dramatically through large-scale construction of housing, commercial districts, and public infrastructure (Bai, Chen, & Shi, 2012; Bai, Shi, & Liu, 2014). Real estate became one of the country’s most powerful economic engines, contributing more than one-fifth of national economic output when accounting for connected sectors such as manufacturing, finance, and construction.

However, this growth model increasingly relied on speculative investment and land-driven financing. New debt restrictions introduced in 2020, combined with economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, exposed vulnerabilities in the system (Qian, Qiu, & Zhang, 2021). Developers faced liquidity crises, projects stalled, and thousands of partially built developments were abandoned. By the end of 2023, unfinished building projects had been reported across at least 142 Chinese cities.

These unfinished projects are more than simple construction delays. Zhang and colleagues recently estimated that 1,779 stalled developments have already resulted in approximately 485 million tonnes of wasted construction materials, 181 million tonnes of ineffective carbon emissions, and nearly US$347 billion in sunk financial losses. The impacts extend further still. Construction-related pollution from these projects includes substantial emissions of toxic substances and fine particulate matter, generating environmental and health costs that conventional economic assessments often overlook (Zhang et al., 2026).

The social consequences are equally profound. Financial losses disproportionately affect vulnerable groups such as first-time homebuyers and newly arrived urban migrants. For many young people in China, homeownership remains closely linked to social expectations surrounding marriage and family formation. Consequently, unfinished housing developments may influence not only household finances but also broader patterns of social mobility and demographic change (Khuc, 2026).

Traditionally, urban development is assessed through concepts such as assets, growth, and investment. However, the study argues that unfinished building projects may be better understood as urban non-assets—structures that consume land, materials, and energy while generating no functional return. Unlike completed buildings, they accumulate environmental burdens without delivering corresponding social services (Zhang et al., 2026).

This situation reveals a peculiar paradox of modern development (Vuong, 2025; Nguyen & Ho, 2026). Cities are built to shelter human lives, yet entire landscapes can emerge where buildings exist without inhabitants and resources are consumed without purpose. In other words, societies may become increasingly efficient at constructing cities while becoming less certain about what those cities are ultimately being built for.

References

Bai, X., Chen, J., & Shi, P. (2012). Landscape urbanization and economic growth in China: Positive feedbacks and sustainability dilemmas. Environmental Science & Technology, 46, 132-139. https://doi.org/10.1021/es202329f

Bai, X., Shi, P., & Liu, Y. (2014). Society: Realizing China’s urban dream. Nature, 509, 158-160. https://doi.org/10.1038/509158a

He, C., et al. (2021). Future global urban water scarcity and potential solutions. Nature Communications, 12, 4667. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25026-3

Khuc, V. Q. & Nguyen, M. H. (2026). Cultural Additivity Theory. https://books.google.com/books?id=Y4XZEQAAQBAJ

National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBSC) (2024). National Statistics Office Department Heads Explain Key Economic Data for 2023.

Nguyen, M. H., & Ho, M. T. (2026). The absurdist approach to unveiling possible paradoxical thinking for innovative socio-psychological research. MethodsX, 16, 103910. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2026.103910

Qian, X., Qiu, S., & Zhang, G. (2021). The impact of COVID-19 on housing price: Evidence from China. Finance Research Letters, 43, 101944. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2021.101944

Vuong, Q. H. (2025). Wild Wise Weird. AISDL. https://books.google.com/books?id=C5dDEQAAQBAJ

Zhang, N., et al. (2026). China’s unfinished buildings have created stranded assets with substantial resource and socioeconomic costs. One Earth, 9(5), 101649. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2026.101649