Official city sources have quashed a rumor that the government of Nanjing city, capital of East China's Jiangsu province, planned to paint all the roofs of houses in the city.

The rumor stemmed from a micro blog which said a high-level official of the city wanted to improve the cityscape from above. Then it was circulated on the Internet that the project would cost 100 million yuan (about $15,520,000).

However, the rumors were quelled when a verified official confirmed a much smaller scale project had been proposed, the Yangzi Evening News reported Tuesday.

According to the proposal, not all the city's residential roofs would be painted, but only about 100 houses in the Gulou district, and the budget would be 30-50 million yuan (about $4,656,000 to $7,761,000), said Zhu Xianrong, the deputy director of the property management office of city's real estate management bureau.

Zhu explained the Gulou district could be easily observed from the 450-metre-high skyscraper Greenland Square Zifeng Tower, the landmark building of the city, and the shabby roofs, with their mixed colors, were out of phase with the district's surrounding landscape. The roofs would not just be painted but renovated also, Zhu added.

However, some residents thought the house roofs did not warrant such large government expenditure, especially for what is essentially just an image project. One netizen said the money could be better spent on improving the drainage system to prevent the city from being inundated by rain water again.