Page - 176 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

176 siting futurity on “Hallstatt — An Austrian Town in China Where No One Is Home,” Lukas Messmer notes: The area around Chinese Hallstatt is the result of a real es- tate boom gone wild. China’s GDP growth relies heavily on property development. Also, many people use real estate as a means to hedge against inflation and gain wealth. It has created vast urban developments nobody lives in. Hallstatt is one of them. […] Beijing is aware of the situation. Ghost towns, or in communist lingo, “sleeping towns,” were a hot topic at annual meetings in the last years. Following Premier Li Keqiang’s work report in 2014, the government issued a policy paper urging local governments to stop “extensive de- velopment” and heal “city sickness.” (Messmer 2015) Given how widespread the copy town phenomenon is and how difficult it can be to get access to unfiltered news out of China, it is difficult to determine the extent of “city sickness.” Thames Town, for example, seems to be making a comeback. Writing in 2015 Lachmann described it as eine reine Villensiedlung mit Zaun und Pförtner (Gated Community). Doch die Stadt ist bis auf wenige Menschen unbewohnt. Auch wenn viele Häuser und Grundstücke verkauft wurden, scheinen sie bis auf wenige Ausnahmen nur wenig genutzt zu werden. Im Kernbereich der Siedlung finden sich noch einige Geschäfte, der Rest wirkt verlas- sen. Nur um die Kathedrale herum, deren Original in Bris- tol steht, ist meist etwas los, denn sie bildet einen gefragten Hintergrund für Hochzeitsfotos. Ansonsten sind in Thames Town hauptsächlich Wachleute und Putzkräfte zu finden. [a proper gated community with fence and guards. However, except for a few people, the city is uninhabited. Even when many houses and properties were sold, except for a few ex- ceptions no use seems to be made of them. In the central area there are some shops, but the rest seems deserted. Only