There is something slightly surreal about seeing Xiong’an from the air.
Roads stretch across the landscape in perfect grids. Entire neighbourhoods appear already mapped out. Bridges cross waterways that seem to be waiting for traffic. Apartment blocks rise beside empty plots where future streets have already been drawn into the earth.
Most cities grow because people are there.
Xiong’an is trying something different: build the city first, then bring the people.
China’s City of the Future
China announced the Xiong’an New Area in 2017, roughly 100 kilometres southwest of Beijing.
It was never intended to become just another Chinese city.
Xiong’an is part of a much larger attempt to reorganise the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei metropolitan region. The idea is to move universities, government-linked institutions, corporate headquarters and other functions away from an increasingly congested Beijing and create an entirely new urban centre around them.
Instead of allowing a city to develop organically over centuries, planners effectively started with a blank sheet of paper.
Transport.
Housing.
Schools.
Hospitals.
Parks.
Business districts.
Digital infrastructure.
All planned together.
It is urbanism on an almost absurd scale.
First the Infrastructure. Then the Population.
Looking down from an aircraft makes the philosophy particularly obvious.
You can see streets leading towards places that barely exist yet.
You can see enormous blocks divided into future neighbourhoods.
You can see the skeleton of a metropolis before all its organs have arrived.
There is an almost science-fiction quality to it.
Normally a village becomes a town, a town becomes a city, and eventually someone desperately tries to build enough infrastructure to support everyone living there.
Xiong’an reverses the order.
Build the metro before the commuters.
Build the schools before the children.
Build the neighbourhood before the neighbour.
And wait.
But Xiong’an Is No Longer an Empty City
Calling Xiong’an a ghost city today would be misleading.
By March 2026, Chinese government figures said the developed area had reached around 215 square kilometres, containing more than 5,300 buildings and about 1.41 million residents. Universities, hospitals, state-owned company headquarters and technology companies are increasingly moving into the area.
The government is still pouring enormous resources into the project. Xiong’an’s 2026 land plan alone provides for about 23,700 mu of new state construction land, with large portions dedicated to transport, public services, housing and infrastructure.
Even something as ordinary as school enrolment now tells the story: newly constructed districts have their own kindergartens and primary schools accepting children from the families gradually moving into them.
The empty-looking grids are slowly acquiring everyday life.
Can You Manufacture a City?
And this is where Xiong’an becomes much more interesting than simply another Chinese megaproject.
Because a city is not really buildings.
Paris isn’t Paris because somebody constructed enough apartment blocks.
Baghdad isn’t Baghdad because engineers drew enough roads.
Beijing isn’t Beijing because planners calculated the optimal number of hospitals.
Cities are millions of accidental interactions accumulated over generations: restaurants opening beside factories, strange neighbourhoods developing reputations, people meeting in cafés, shortcuts appearing through parks, businesses failing, buildings being repurposed and completely unintended cultures emerging.
You can design infrastructure.
You can design buildings.
You can design a metro map.
But can you design urban life?
That is the experiment taking place in Xiong’an.
The Ultimate Planned City
Perhaps future historians will look at Xiong’an as visionary.
Instead of endlessly repairing cities designed for another century, China simply built one for the next.
Electric transport, green spaces, high-speed rail, digital infrastructure and carefully planned neighbourhoods could eventually produce something remarkably efficient.
Or perhaps Xiong’an will demonstrate the limits of central planning: that cities cannot simply be created through construction schedules and government directives.
Most likely, the truth will fall somewhere between the two.
The government can build Xiong’an.
Only its inhabitants can turn it into a city.
And that might take decades.
A City Waiting for Its Future
From 10,000 metres above the North China Plain, Xiong’an looks almost like a gigantic circuit board carved into farmland.
The streets are there.
The buildings are coming.
The railway stations are operating.
The schools are opening.
The people are arriving.
What remains to be seen is something no master plan can guarantee:
whether somewhere built as a “city of the future” can eventually acquire something every great city received from the past — a soul.
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