Ordos Municipality: A market-era resource boomtown

Ordos Municipality is a prefecture-level city in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The city emerged in the 2000s as a coalmining boomtown exploiting endowments equal to one sixth of China's total proven coal reserve. After converting from rural to urban status in 2001, the local government also used the resource boom to vastly expand the urban areas of the municipality and stimulate broader industrialization. Rapid urban expansion helped to inflate a severe property bubble and spurred the formation of volatile informal financial networks. Crashes in the local property market and informal finance in 2011 caused a sharp downturn in the local economy. Ordos' city-building agenda, with its strong emphasis on land development and lacking a broad industrial base, produced unstable economic conditions. Due to its recent problems, Ordos is now widely cited as a cautionary example for other resource-based cities in China.