China's land watchdog has vowed to tighten its control of land use in the building of new towns and cities because many just-completed projects across the nation have lain empty in recent years.

In many districts, land and money have been wasted on building houses, streets, shopping malls and plazas in areas where few people live.

Authorities will now permit no land to be used to build new districts in towns and cities unless this is aimed at avoiding natural disasters and alleviating high population density in downtown areas.

Dong Zuoji, director of the Ministry of Land and Resources' Planning Department, announced the new control measures on Thursday.

A ministry survey of 391 new districts built in towns and cities found that the land owned by each resident was on average 193 square meters, about 73 sq m more than the maximum national standard.

"This irrational expansion has been a severe issue for China," Dong said.

With the nation's ambitious urbanization plan ongoing, Dong said there is still a need to build new towns and cities, and the ministry will support land demand for such construction.

Developers must prepare a comprehensive land plan, with a detailed layout and projected population density for land of less than 100 sq m per capita, that will be assessed by the ministry and approved or rejected, Dong said.

A national plan to speed up urbanization aims to help about 100 million people settle in towns and cities by 2020.

"However, construction land for megacities will be strictly controlled," Dong said.

China, which has about 20 percent of the world's population but only 7 percent of its arable land, regards its land supply as precious, especially given its rapid economic development and urbanization.

In recent years, the surge of "ghost cities" nationwide has made headlines and triggered criticism.

Yang Baojun, vice-president of the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, said urban construction in China, in a quest for instant benefit, lacks foresight and ignores basic development principles.

The urban property vacancy rate rose to 22.4 percent last year from 20.6 percent in 2011, according to a report in June by the China Household Finance Survey of the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.

Forty-nine million property units lay vacant in 2013, the report said.

China Economic Net reported in July 2013 that China had at least 12 "ghost cities" - four in Inner Mongolia, three in Henan, one in Liaoning, two in Jiangsu, one in Hubei and one in Yunnan - where people and cars are rarely seen.

wangqian@chinadaily.com.cn