Why it looks like this

Ordos sits on some of China's richest coal fields, and in the 2000s the suddenly wealthy city decided to build itself a new seat: Kangbashi, begun in 2004 on open steppe — monumental plazas, museums shaped like dunes, broad axes and housing for a huge population that was slow to come.

For years photographers made it the emblem of overbuilt China: a complete planned city with hardly any people. It has gradually filled — schools and government offices were moved in to seed life — but the map still shows the strange purity of streets drawn all at once, waiting for their city.