So, some city planners in China were hanging out one day and thought, “Dude — what if we combined, like, nine cities to make one gigantic city? Like, the biggest city in the world? Like, ever?” It’s just an idea right now, but the big question here is why?

The city would be 16,000 square miles, have a population of 42 million people (for a comparison, that’s about five times New York City’s population, which is already overcrowded and huge), and will cost 2 trillion yuan ($304 billion) to combine the infrastructures of Dongguan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Shenzhen, Zhaoqing, Zhongshan, and Zhuhai over the next six years.

That sounds huge! Is that why they’re doing it? For the sake of having the hugest city in the world? A city bigger than a small country? Will the as-yet-unnamed city become its own country? In the future, will they break it off, send it into space, and make it a planet? The first Chinese planet? Will that planet develop its own space program and find other planets? Would it still be considered Chinese at that point? Is China doing this to compete with another city-combining project that we don’t currently know about? Who would that even be?? Will America try to do the same? I should have stayed awake during global economics. I really should have.

(Title pic and story via The Telegraph via 21st Century Boy)

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