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20 Abandoned Cities and Towns from Around the World [PICS]

weburbanist.com — These 20 abandoned cities of the world share an eerie, haunted quality that is part of what makes them so fascinating.

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  • smitas, on 07/06/2008, -22/+3Why were they abandoned?
    • dha07030, on 07/06/2008, -0/+15Read much?
    • relic180, on 07/06/2008, -0/+11Yea, if I'm not mistaken, every single of of them explains why they're abandoned. So, RTFA.
  • voxtarri, on 07/06/2008, -1/+25Does this mean the cities are up for sale? I want one.
    • Tribunis, on 07/06/2008, -1/+5If they are, I'm buying one and turning it into a tourist attraction!
    • Wilsomatic, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2Each one should be turned into a Laser Skirmish arena. Oh yes.
    • harveywalbanger, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2I'm squatting an abandoned town for my next family vacation
  • huskerpower02, on 07/06/2008, -3/+61Wow, talk of abandoned cities and for once, no mention of Chernobyl. I'm pleasantly surprised.
    • scallon, on 07/06/2008, -0/+7Yeah, I like when the lists only include those places one can visit without getting exposed to radiation.
    • Tonorific, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2Your right, I was expecting to see it. It was probably the biggest and fastest abandonment in history. Ive seen some really stunning post apocalyptic imagery from there too. A quick Google images search:
      http://www.tiblu.com/img/chernobyl2007/
    • richmomz, on 07/07/2008, -1/+2Though it was interesting to see some new examples that have not been presented before, Chernobyl really belongs in the list (if not at the top of the list). Was very surprised to see that it was omitted as it is probably one of the best known (and interesting) examples of an abandoned city.
    • aeroeng, on 07/07/2008, -0/+0yea, am surprised too as its most infamous. its abandonment was perhaps most dramatic and heart breaking
    • MuskokasFinest, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1Yea I was thinking about places like Machu Picchu. I guess the title is "20 MODERN Abandoned Towns and Cities from Around the World that You Can Visit Without Receiving Radiation Poisoning"
  • dha07030, on 07/06/2008, -0/+36The Kowloon Walled City looks like something out of a movie. I just can't believe people really lived like that.
    • relic180, on 07/06/2008, -0/+6It's looked awesome.

      I wonder if they provided fixed rate mortgages for the upper income lofts.
    • brundlefly76, on 07/07/2008, -0/+4Yeah it looks like a Terry Gilliam movie - amazing.
      Too bad its torn down, I would have loved to spend a weekend in that city of sin just for the experience.
    • nunquam, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2Kowoloon was actually the inspiration for The Narrows in Batman Begins. Christopher Nolan talks about it here: http://movies.ign.com/articles/622/622719p1.html
  • nheels, on 07/06/2008, -0/+27For $2.3M you can get 83 houses, 2 office buildings, a church, school, infirmary, waste-water treatment centre, a baseball diamond, a tennis court, a bowling alley, group housing unit, all hydro/water and telecommunication structures, and 3 miles of paved road in Edgar, Ontario. The province bought the federal air base some 35 years ago and have recently decided to sell the city.
    Check out: http://www.pinetreeline.org/photos/p14-99.html
    • spookyttws, on 07/07/2008, -0/+7Fence it off and you've got a hell of a nice place to be come the day the zombies attack.
    • blanketfury, on 07/07/2008, -1/+5An aspiring cult leader's wet dream.
    • erydan, on 07/07/2008, -0/+3Is that still for sale? That listing is 10 years old.
    • nheels, on 07/07/2008, -0/+3Yup. I live about 25 mins from the site and it has a for sale sign at the main entrance.
    • Black6x, on 07/07/2008, -0/+5Micropayments to Digg, and we can call it Digg City. Donators can have their SN put on a mural at the center of the city.
    • passedoutghost, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2I can't believe no one has bought that yet!
    • jamez, on 07/08/2008, -0/+1The Government owns it, they are sitting on it just using it for OPP training until someone buys it.

      We could set up a modern day Jonestown... Let me know, I'm close, too.

  • writingtravel, on 07/06/2008, -1/+33Gary, Indiana, abandoned? Who would have guessed? Do the city's residents know?
    • explicitmemory, on 07/06/2008, -2/+2yes, ask Michael Jackson (born and raised).
      • yensed, on 07/07/2008, -2/+2He's actually correct.
        "Birth name Michael Joseph Jackson
        Born August 29, 1958 (1958-08-29) (age 49)
        Gary, Indiana, USA"
        -Wikipedia
    • ileftfark, on 07/06/2008, -0/+3"Bah, 102,746 people is a drop in the bucket" - Dick Cheney
    • richmomz, on 07/07/2008, -0/+6If you've ever been there you would understand - large parts of the downtown area are completely abandoned to all except squatters (hence the reason for the high crime rate). Imagine a modern-day crime-ridden forclosure neighborhood, but on a massive scale and you get the idea.
    • s0nicfreak, on 07/07/2008, -1/+1Maybe they meant "abandoned by all intelligent lifeforms"
    • SGIsus, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1it doesn't say it's abandoned, it's just dilapidated. Hence the title '20 Abandoned Cities from Around the World: Deserted Towns and Other Derelict Places'
  • mark076h, on 07/06/2008, -2/+18How is Prypiat and Chernobyl not on this list?
    • passedoutghost, on 07/07/2008, -0/+0Because it's a list of abandoned places which you can visit without getting radiation poisoning.
  • microbreak, on 07/06/2008, -1/+24Very interesting read, but I wish they would have laid out the corresponding text on top of the photo sets rather than underneath it.
    • erydan, on 07/07/2008, -0/+4Seriously, I think that is the 2nd article this weekend like that.
    • milkmit, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1I see so many like that from pretty big sites, and I have NO idea why they do it. I understand images grab people's attention, but with no headline to lead, and with so small a margin at the bottom of each segment, it becomes one huge, ugly, hard-to-follow mess.

      At the very least, put the headline/town name at top, follow with the picture, and then close with the body text. Add a larger margin between the body text and the next segment/town, and it would all be so much more pleasurable to read. As it is, I wound up glancing through the images briefly and then closing the window, rather than spend time trying to make sense of a design that went against my own intuition.
  • kineticworm, on 07/06/2008, -1/+1820 creepiest places to be at night.
  • Rizoh, on 07/06/2008, -3/+3Wow, I didn't realize we had so many ghost towns here in the U.S.
  • DaviDaviDaviD, on 07/06/2008, -0/+14The best has to be the first one. Just look at it, imagine all the stuff that went on in there during the night...or even the day! No suprise the officials wanted to tear it down!
    • Rolcol, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2You could have a baby and leave and not have to pay child support
  • spookyttws, on 07/06/2008, -7/+3Very cool. Sort of a 'I am Legend'/'Wall-E' feel to the shots.
    • allruiz, on 07/07/2008, -1/+1I'm sure Pixar's animators and crew take a tour in several of this cities just for inspiration.
  • ileftfark, on 07/06/2008, -1/+15Heh, no mention of Centralia, PA. Although with a population of 9, it isn't entirely "abandoned", I guess. What makes this city worthy of note is that there's been a raging ***** inferno under that city for *46 years*. And that fire was started by firefighters.

    Pennsylvania ingenuity ftw!
    • gl77, on 07/07/2008, -0/+4not to mention it was the inspiration for the town of Silent Hill.
    • bzkt, on 07/07/2008, -2/+1You lost me at "population of 9".
  • roastedbagel, on 07/06/2008, -9/+4Call of Duty comes to mind when seeing these.
  • roastedbagel, on 07/07/2008, -1/+11Oh, and dugg for all being on the same page.
  • Twenty5, on 07/07/2008, -1/+4Where is Atlantis?
  • brwright, on 07/07/2008, -1/+4Also check out http://www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com/ for more great pictures.
  • Gm7Cadd9, on 07/07/2008, -1/+6fifty-thousand people used to live here.... now it's a ghost town.
  • Thrilltone, on 07/07/2008, -0/+6These articles never cease to amaze.
    The Kowloon Walled City. WOW!
    • pr0t0, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2Now I know the inspiration for GuildWars Factions.
      Kaineng City, anyone?
  • Bhatch514, on 07/07/2008, -3/+12how about down town Detroit?
    • krekc, on 07/07/2008, -0/+5Its abandoned after 5pm on the weekdays only. ;)
  • bubbajosh, on 07/07/2008, -1/+2Yeah, I don't get why at least Pripyat wasn't on this list.
  • RDist, on 07/07/2008, -0/+6Anyone know any good sites for more info on the Kowloon Walled City? What an amazing and scary place it must have been back in the day.
  • yeahright, on 07/07/2008, -0/+4There's a town in SW Ontario called "Wroxeter". Their claim to fame (as cited on their town sign) is "Former Ghost Town."
  • ConfusedCartman, on 07/07/2008, -5/+7Why isn't Chernobyl on the list?
  • suntzusputnik, on 07/07/2008, -0/+7kowloon was only abandoned because it was demolished
  • eth3l, on 07/07/2008, -0/+3This is what the interwebs are for.
  • RajAtWork, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2Mmmm, Agdam.. They used to make mean cheap wine there of the same name.
  • kinerry, on 07/07/2008, -3/+1No Centralia? ***** THIS LIST!!!
  • bownasterm, on 07/07/2008, -3/+3As others have stated, they left out chernobyl I would have thought that would be the #1 coolest abandoned city.
  • kinerry, on 07/07/2008, -0/+7Chernobyl isn't abandoned jackasses

    Also, what about some of the north korean cities?
    • Kanten, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2No sane person hangs around Prypiat. That doesn't count as a population.
    • elscroto, on 07/07/2008, -0/+0cos no-one can get photos of em probablly.
  • bromac, on 07/07/2008, -0/+5CODY, BC?

    Yes, it's a cool site. But it's just a footnote compared to the ghost town just a few miles away: Sandon, BC. Sandon still has many buildings intact, including a functional powerhouse. It was a bustling town of 5,000, not the tiny "town" of cody which was only 150 people, because it was just a mining camp, not a town.

    Anyways, glad to see this little destination show up on the list, but to be accurate SANDON BC is the ghost town, not Cody.
    • metroidragon, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1Or how about Barkerville, British Columbia? Barkerville was the largest town north of San Francisco and west of Chicago during it's heyday, that's a very large area, and now it's a ghost town. The Valley of Ghosts here in good ol' BC has many, many better ghost towns than Cody.
  • andy314159pi, on 07/07/2008, -0/+2Wow the Craco Italy site has an ancient castle on a hill that I'm sure should be opened as a museum or something.
  • redxii, on 07/07/2008, -2/+7Nice, but confusing layout. Pictures need to be under the description, like:

    "1. The Kowloon Walled City ...

    [pictures of Kowloon]

    2. The small village of Oradour-sur-Glane, France

    [pictures of Oradour-sur-Glane, France"

    and so on
    • nunquam, on 07/07/2008, -1/+1Yes! I stopped reading Web Urbanist because the layout pissed me off so much
  • krekc, on 07/07/2008, -0/+3Nice list and dugg but seriously need bigger or even more pictures.
  • hotnoodle, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1Kayakoy (number 17) inspired the book "Birds Without Wings" by Louis de Bernières. Worth a read if you're interested in the history, albeit wrapped in a fictionalized story. It wasn't completely vacated when the Greeks left, they just didn't get enough Turks in the trade-off to repopulate it. Pretty eerie place to walk around... only sound is the bleating of goats and buzzing of insects.
  • mct17, on 07/07/2008, -2/+1I mean, WOW. All of those wasted land....
    • hippykiller, on 07/07/2008, -2/+1You must really hate forest too.
  • bizsumpark182, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1Where is Centralia, PA?
    • Balanced, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1It's in Pennsylvania, a state of the United States, a nation on Planet Earth. Please consult your Astronavigation department for directions to Earth: Some star atlases may have us under the primary listed as 'Sol.'

      Give this list some credit: it didn't claim to be the 'top' or 'greatest'.... Just 20 examples. Almost anyone with an interest in this kind of topic has likely read about Centralia and Pripyat/Chernobyl.

  • etnuts, on 07/07/2008, -2/+1burried.

    no Chernobyl and Prypiat
  • nunquam, on 07/07/2008, -1/+2Kowloon was the inspiration for The Narrows in the current Gotham City. Christopher Nolan mentions where they drew the look for Gotham from in this interview http://movies.ign.com/articles/622/622719p1.html
  • svc_strife, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1New Buffalo Michigan needs to be abandoned that place is a hell hole.
  • s0nicfreak, on 07/07/2008, -0/+3Hahaha first thing I thought when I read the title was Gary Indiana (my hometown) but then I thought "no way it'll actually be on there..."
  • jennabunnykins, on 07/07/2008, -1/+6where are all the zombies?
  • Kanten, on 07/07/2008, -1/+1No Centralia? The hell?
  • CJHtxGeek, on 07/07/2008, -0/+3Wish I had known the true nature of Kowloon before I read the Jason Bourne series (believe it's supremacy where he tools around Hong Kong area,) Amazing
  • Tourist, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1Fascinating and a little eery.. thanks for posting this!
  • yotis, on 07/07/2008, -0/+0Hello there! May I suggest another two that are not on your list? Chernobyl and Pripyat in Ukraine. Some photos and info can be found on Elena's webpage ( http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/ ).It seems that is actually possible to go there with some precautions.
    Great article, very nice photos.I'm curios if you did all the photos :)
  • celticspringers, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1should have included pompeii.
  •  

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