I found this article which provides an eye witness account of Zhengzhou, China. This city was featured in 60 Minutes's report of China's ghost cities...

http://www.vagabondjourney.com/zhengzhou-zhengdong-china-largest-ghost-city/

After reading this article, "ghost cities in China" are no longer on my concern radar. If anything, it seems to me that:

• Building entire replacement cities can only support overall demand for resources
• These new cities will only make it easier for people to have cars, appliances, "stuff", etc. which further drives overall demand
• And of course the old cities are still there, continuing to consume resources

Here's a portion of the article:

"...Zhengzhou is the capital of Henan province and has a rapidly growing population that’s topped eight million. Over the past decade, construction crews have been building a new district in its northeastern suburbs. The rationale here is simple: it is easier and more effective to build a new city than it is to completely tear down and then rebuild an existing one. This is an urban planning strategy that many big cities in China are in the active process of conducting to varying degrees.

The layouts of many older cities of China cannot easily be made to fill the demands of the modern era. Rather than fighting long, losing battles against transportation, urban migration, and sanitation, the Chinese are just starting over and building new cities from scretch. The old city of Zhengzhou is currently packed bumper to bumper with automobiles — its curvy, narrow, organically created streets are a warzone of traffic. The city is a scrambled mess that has been brought to a breaking point by a population that’s overgrown its bounds and consumes more resources than ever — so a pressure valve has been released in its northeastern quadrant, and the Zhengdong New District was created.

Many of China’s new urban districts are not being built for new migrants coming into cities, but for people looking to escape the congestion and insanity of the old cities. So, generally speaking, many of these new cities are being created to accommodate the country’s rising wealthy and middle classes — who tend to drive personal automobiles, leave large resource consumption footprints, and, simply speaking, want more space and things.

So the eastern suburbs of Zhengzhou were transformed into a rolling sea of brand new high-rises, soaring skyscrapers, elevated highways, museums, exhibition centers, and shopping malls. This new district currently covers 58 square kilometers, roughly the size of San Francisco, and there are plans to nearly quadruple it. Zhengdong was designed to hold two million people and act as the city’s upper/ middle class epicenter — a new city for the rich.

Likewise, no amount of monumentality was spared in the building of this zone. China’s new cities are often made to be recognized, they are built to be epic. The landscape in Zhengdong is littered with post-modern landmarks, oddly shaped buildings, and a kaleidoscopic offering of differing and contrasting architectural styles — the inevitable result of Chinese engineers and architects being given a completely blank urban canvas to paint a new city upon. So Zhengdong has a museum that looks like a clutch of golden Easter eggs, an exhibition center shaped like a paper fan, a chubby skyscraper that seems to have been modeled off of an overfed leech, and a dozen or so flamboyant, built-to-be-recognized towers..."