Craco, Italy Craco has been a ghost town since the late 20th century. Located in the far south of Italy, Craco's vertiginous location and spectacular architecture make it one of the most visually arresting abandoned towns in the world.
Hashima Island, Japan, was once a bustling community.
Developed initially as a residence for people working in the undersea coal mines in 1887, Hashima Island quickly expanded into an island of concrete high-rise buildings housing over 5,000 people.
Pillinger, Tasmania
Pillinger is an abandoned town on Macquarie Harbour, on Tasmania's west coast. It was constructed in 1897 by Irish prospector James Crotty, who founded North Mount Lyell Company, and it quickly became a thriving port.
Pripyat, Ukraine
Probably the most famous abandoned city in the world is Pripyat, which had been built in 1970 to house workers at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant located less than 1.25 miles (2 km) away.
North Korea's 'Hotel Of Doom' Is The Tallest Abandoned Building In The World. The 105-story, 1,083-foot structure protrudes above the rest of the Pyongyang skyline. In 1987, workers began constructing what would be the tallest hotel in the world in Pyongyang, North Korea.
was decimated. The bustling and busy town of Kennicott in Alaska, US, attracted thousands of families and miners from 1905 until 1938 and was responsible for over 590,000 tonnes of copper and nine million ounces of silver.
Pripyat was given city status in 1979, some nine years after it was founded to house workers at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The Ukrainian city was home to around 50,000 people when it was evacuated on April 27, 1986, following the now infamous disaster at Chernobyl.
Ghost Cities are vacant neighborhoods and sometimes whole cities that were built but were never inhabited. Their existence is a physical manifestation of Chinese overdevelopment in real estate and the dependence on housing as an investment strategy.
'The Most Toxic Town in America'
The town of Picher, Okla became an incorporated community in 1920, with a population of 9,726. The town was built around lead and zinc mining. In fact, Picher mine shafts produced over half of the lead used to make bullets fired during World War I.
A ghost town (deserted city or abandoned city) is an abandoned village, town, or city, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads.
One reason behind this large landmass being so desolate is the shortage of rainfall. More than two-third part of the country only receives less than 500 mm annual rain. This arid, uninhabitable part of Australia lies in the middle of the continent (the Outback), away from the coasts.
Silverton, New South Wales
After arriving on the scene off the back of the discovery of silver deposits, and later silver-lead-zinc ore, Silverton's population peaked at around 3000 in the 1890s. Now, less than 50 people call it home.
Coober Pedy is at the centre of Australia's opal mining industry. Now, 60% of its residents live underground, and the town is becoming a leader in sustainable living.
In the Mojave Desert you'll find California City, a city famous for dreaming big. A huge chunk of it is gridded roads—complete with names, speed limits, and GPS driving directions—with nothing built on the vast majority of those plots. Incorporated in 1965, California City is a living contradiction.
So the majority of ghost towns date from the 1880-1940 period of westward expansion and industrialization. Texas and California top the list thanks to mining and oil towns, with Texas surging after 1901's Spindletop discovery and California towns booming in the rail expansion of the 1880s.
There are currently as many as 50 ghost cities and 64 million empty apartments across the country. Building a city sounds easy after looking at the pictures of tall apartments, commercial buildings and modern architecture. But to build a city means building a community.
Australia topped the list as the least polluted country in the world, with 7 cities in the top 25.
Due to a lack of roads, trails, and water, very few people venture into this area. Beveridge, a gold mining town that never had roads to it, boomed in the late 1800s and then shrank and was abandoned in the early 1900s as its only water source dried up.
Some towns died because the economy which supported them finished or failed. Mines are worked out, timber is cut down, wells go dry, and new routes bypass the community. Still others die from natural or manmade disasters. Floods and droughts, heavy regulation, or total lawlessness ended their share of towns.
It was so named because access to the area was barred to most of the subjects of the realm. Government functionaries and even the imperial family were permitted only limited access; the emperor alone could enter any section at will.
China had 3.5 billion square feet of finished but unsold apartments in February, according to Wind, a data provider. That is equivalent to around 4 million homes, according to some estimates.
Some cities are so top-secret they can't even be found on a map. Others are padlocked, hidden in the forest, or buried deep underground. From Poland's 800-year-old Wieliczka Salt Mines to America's WWII mystery towns, SPYSCAPE explores some of the world's most intriguing secret cities.
Cappadocia city, located in central Turkey, is home to no less than 36 underground cities, and at a depth of approx. 85 m, Derinkuyu is the deepest.
Two cities, the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg (as they are officially called), retained much of their autonomy after German unification in 1871 and are now states of Germany.