World’s Fastest-Growing Megalopolis Hides in Fog

China’s Chongqing municipality with a population now at 32 million is the fastest-growing urban center on Earth. Economic migrants from the countryside and neighboring provinces have swelled Chongqing at a rate of between 500,000 to 1 million people every year.

A decade ago — as part of plans to raise living standards in the western provinces — the Chinese government put Chonqing at the center of a $200 billion program of investment in infrastructure and commerce. The Guardian has described it as “the biggest megalopolis you’ve never heard of.”

City of Ambition, an online “gallerybook” by Turkish photographer Ferit Kuyas, is a spectral and haunting look at the drastic urbanization of what was once a relatively modest-sized metropolis. Chongqing’s population in its main urban areas was a little over 5 million in 2000. By 2020 it’s estimated that it will be 20 million.

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