Ghost towns
(Book)

A lifeless village in Turkey where the houses are crumbling and the streets are empty; an abandoned island in southern Japan; homes left under a blanket of volcanic ash in Chile; a deserted new town in Spain where construction sites are neglected and houses remain unsold. Where has everyone gone? And why aren't they coming back? From former gold rush towns to settlements evacuated because of natural disasters or chemical spills and from communities caught up in war zones to deserted whaling stations, fishing villages, ports and mines, Ghost Towns tells, in 160 striking images, the stories behind these desolate images."--back cover

"From ramshackle houses in the former mining town of Animas Forks in Colorado to more than 100,000 new apartments lying empty in Chenggong in China, from idle factories in Henry Ford's purpose-built town of Fordlandia on the edge of the Brazilian rainforest to Suakin port in Sudan--once a prosperous and busy hub, but now a collection of ruins, GHOST TOWNS explores fascinating sites from all around the world and across years of history. Aside from the haunting beauty of desolate towns and crumbling buildings, the images introduce us to interesting stories of what happened before. Why the village of Klomino in Poland has lain empty since 1993, how the Chernobyl disaster in Pripyat, Ukraine, cased the whole population of the town to be evacuated and how the mining town of Kiandra in Australia went from a population of 15,000 to complete abandonment just a few years later. With causes ranging from the collapse of local industry to being pushed aside to make way for new industry, from earthquakes, volcanoes and floods to man-made chemical spills, from war zones to areas subject to bad omens, this book explores a wide range of environments that have been left uninhabited. With 160 outstanding photographs of ancient ruins, churches, towns, cities, mines, whaling stations, factories, ports, hotels, railway stations and islands from around the world, Ghost Towns is a fascinating visual history of the mysteries of lost worlds."--jacket flap