China is building new, green cities but can't find people to live there

The Tianfu project was approved a year after Fan arrived, bringing an influx of government support that helped boost property prices

Just outside the southwestern city of Chengdu, China is building an urban paradise bigger than Houston. Visitors are greeted by a sea of manicured grass encircling a man-made lake, dotted with water lilies, that is almost the size of New York’s Central Park. 

This is Tianfu Park City, one of hundreds of “eco city” developments taking over farms and rural land in China as the government tries to accommodate the 100 million people it had planned to move from villages into urban areas by 2020.  After decades of unbridled urbanization that allowed concrete high-rise suburbs to sprawl around its big cities,