When it was newly built, the streets of the new Kangbashi district did not have much activity, and the district was frequently described as a "ghost city" by several Western media outlets. However, by 2017, Kangbashi had become more populated with a resident population of 153,000 and around one-third of apartments occupied. In a "Forbes" article, Wade Shepard noted that "...of the 40,000 apartments that had been built in the new district since 2004, only 500 are still on the market.