Ghost Towns

[Dirty new yorker]

These are some neat places, I especially like the Orkney isles one.

[erbse]

Really interesting thread with loads of great impressions. A fascinating topic, really.

How about some "newly created" ghost towns, made by snappy investors?

China's Ghost Cities and Malls

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPILhiTJv7E

[prudence12]

Lots of abandoned areas in Greece, eh?

[lautrec]

Originally Posted by erbse

Really interesting thread with loads of great impressions. A fascinating topic, really.

How about some "newly created" ghost towns, made by snappy investors?

Thanks for that. I would never imagine stuff like these is going on in China.

[Munwon]

Interesting thread!

[joshsam]

Great vid about china!

[erbse]

64 million(!) living units that remain empty in China! That's almost as much as all of Germany offers.

That really is hard to grasp. The property bubble of China is going to be HUMONGOUS, to say the least.

[swifty78]

All I can say is what a waste!

[Chimaera]

Agdam, Azerbeidzjan. I learned about it being a ghost town when I did some research, last Friday, about the possible opponent of my team in the Europa League qualifiers, FK Qarabag. That club used to play in Agdam, until it was completely ruined by bombardments.

[tim1807]

Cool pics

[lianli]

Originally Posted by erbse

64 million(!) living units that remain empty in China! That's almost as much as all of Germany offers.

That really is hard to grasp. The property bubble of China is going to be HUMONGOUS, to say the least.

In the next 10-25 years the urban population of china will probably increase by 500-600 Mio. That would be more than 7 times the population of Germany.

BTW
"There are no reliable statistics on residential vacancies in China. The most extreme estimate bandied about in the popular press is that there are 65 million vacant residential units. However, this is no more than an urban myth that has its origin in a highly questionable inference made by an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that reported that 64.5 million electricity meters in urban areas around the country registered zero consumption over a six-month period. The claim about the meters has been vigorously debunked by the pertinent officials and power company executives in China. Despite this, the figure is frequently cited as if it were authoritative.

The figure is ridiculous. Sixty-five million is more than all of the residential housing units constructed in the relevant areas since 2000! Furthermore, it implies an overall vacancy rate of around 40%. Such vacancy rates are plausible in the case of a few Chinese cities that some prima donna hedge fund managers have highlighted in gimmicky YouTube videos filmed at 6:00 a.m. in the morning. However, on a nationwide basis, the 40% figure is patently absurd."
by James Kostohryz

[Nikom]

Kolmanskop, Namibia

The town declined after World War I when the diamond-field slowly exhausted and was ultimately abandoned in 1954. The geological forces of the desert mean that tourists now walk through houses knee-deep in sand. Kolmanskop is popular with photographers for its settings of the desert sands' reclaiming this once-thriving town.

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[Soteropolis1]

IGATU - State of Bahia - BRAZIL

An old diamond mining town, abandoned at the end of XIX century


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090709 Chapada Diamantina 158 por iurikothe, no Flickr

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Igatu, Bahia por Ruiz2009, no Flickr

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Igatú 24 por Fred Schinke, no Flickr

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Igatú 21 por Fred Schinke, no Flickr

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090709 Chapada Diamantina 157 por iurikothe, no Flickr

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Igatú 20 por Fred Schinke, no Flickr

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Igatú 31 por Fred Schinke, no Flickr

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ruínas por tainadelnegri, no Flickr

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Sem título por tainadelnegri, no Flickr

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galeria de arte ao ar livre nas ruínas de Igatu por trak skizo, no Flickr

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Sem título por Renata Gama, no Flickr

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CIMG2177 por Almiro Lemos, no Flickr

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011511_Chapada2_072 por brooklyn_g_girl, no Flickr

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igatu39_2003 por fabioabu, no Flickr

[Paulo Francis]

eee

[mattec]

WV has a bunch of old coal towns, but most of them have already succumbed to nature. The most famous of these towns was/ is Thurmond located in the New River Gorge.

Thurmond was once the central point for most of the coal coming out of WV. At it's height in the 1910s through 30s, it was home to 500 residents in its limits, with another several thousand located on its fringe. These fringe areas were considered the red light district and were notoriously lawless.

The beginning of the end came in 1931, when nationally known hotel/resort Dun Glen (famous for a 14 year long poker match) burned to the grown. Several years later one of the two banks closed, while the other moved to a nearby larger community; By the mid 1950s, Thurmond was a virtual ghost town. Had the Dun Glen not burned and was able to survive the depression, there was a slim chance that Thurmond could have evolved from a freight hub into a tourist based economy and survived. Though the limited auto transportation would have been an immediate issue.

Today most of the land is owned by the NPS (including the train station, which is now a visitor center. But Amtrak will still do a whistle stop if you want.) , even though it still has five residents and is incorporated as a city.

Now:











Then:













The Dun Glen



Two sayings popular about the Thurmond area during its heyday:

"No Sunday west of Clifton Forge and no God west of Hinton."

"The only difference between Hell and Thurmond is that a river runs through Thurmond."

[Wapper]

This is probably one of the saddest ghost towns.

Oradour-sur-Glane in the French Limousin region.
In 1944, Waffen SS soldiers locked up the villagers and burnt down the whole village. It was probably revenge for a previous attack by the resistane. More than 600 people were killed.
Although the Germans burnt the village, it is still intact to a large extent. This actually makes it even more sad when you visit the place. You can feel how people lived and how they had to abandon everything. There are some old burnt cars in the streets and there even was a small railway track.
After the war, a new village was built next to the old place.

All photos are from wikimedia commons by user Dna-Dennis.






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[erbse]

Wow, just wow!


Actually, I can't really think of any German ghost town. Though there might be some sort of, perhaps someone knows an example.

[Wapper]

Doel, Belgium

The port of Antwerp is still growing. In the past, many villages were destroyed in order to make place for new docks and industrial zones. A famous example is Oosterweel. Only a church tower remains in the middel of a vast industrial zone.

Since the 1960s the village Doel is threatened by expansion of the port. Our government actually decided that it would be destroyed because they would make a new dock. Most people already left the village, but a few refuse to go. The old and beautiful village fell into decay. Vandalists and squatters claimed it as their territory. Thanks to fierce protest, Doel still exists today (although many houses have been demolished already) but its future remains uncertain.

I must admit that it is only partially a ghost town today. The process of abandoning the village is still going on, which distinguishes it from the other places in this thread. Still about 300 people of the original 1300 remain and they try to keep the main buidlings (town hall, church, school) clean.

All pictures are from wikimedia commons. I will mention the author names.



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It does not look like an abbandoned village here, I must say


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It is in the middel of the harbour.


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By Torsade de Pointes



Protest slogans on the walls.


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By Friedrich Tellberg





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By Railex



Erbse, wasn't there some abandoned seaside resort somewhere on a North-German island? Or was that in Russia?

[RokasLT]

Didziasalis (Didžiasalis) in Lithuania - abandoned when Soviet Union collapsed and after that brick factory was privatized and quickly closed all residents lost their jobs.




Old ph of brick factory

[BiaMartins]

Originally Posted by Soteropolis1

IGATU - State of Bahia - BRAZIL

An old diamond mining town, abandoned at the end of XIX century

Nice pictures!!! How u found it??