China was dumping money into those cities for people to build businesses and paying people to move there though, it wasn't just the housing. So yes I agree it can work if you go beyond that, but not through applying capitalist principles first and foremost. If you tried to pay people to live in a specific city and pay them again to build a small local business in the US, people would go bonkers about communism and 99% of politicians and capitalist investors would spend every waking moment trying to stop it.