CONSTRUCTION ON KANGBASHI, a grand city on the outskirts of Ordos in Inner Mongolia, started in 2004.

Intended to hold a million residents, less than 30,000 live there today, according to the Daily Mail. High home prices are often blamed for keeping prospective buyers away from the city. But when home prices crashed there late last year – from €893 a square foot in 2006 to €382 a square foot in December 2011 - people started to think Kangbashi was a lost cause.

When Al Jazeera English visited Kangbashi last September, it saw that construction was ongoing despite the fact that few people were moving in. The station noted that while many of the city’s luxury properties have been sold, they sit empty – perhaps because they’re a relatively safe place for people to keep their money.

Flickr user Chaloos traveled to Kangbashi in 2010 and said that when he went, “it was pretty much a ghost town.” Resident have started to trickle in, but not nearly enough to fill the vacant homes. He was kind enough to share some photos with us.