Somewhat related to the "What Cities have shrunk most from their peak" thread, what are the world's largest abandoned cities (or have less than ~10% of their peak or intended population)? Lets use 10,000 as a minimum threshold and say that it should've sustained this population for long enough to build significant infrastructure.
Examples I can think of:
Pripyat, Ukraine peak. 50,000 (current 0)
Agdam, Azerbaijan peak. 40,000 (current 0)
Varosha, Cyprus peak. 40,000 (current 0)
Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong peak. 33,000 (demolished) - not sure if this counts
Tawergha, Libya peak. 25,000 (current 0)
Beichuan, China peak. 20,000 (current 0)
Chernobyl, Ukraine peak. 14,000 (current 700)
Although much smaller, Plymouth Montserrat could be included(at least 6,000 with suburbs before the eruption so smaller than 10,000)..although it was the main town on the island.
Also smaller one would be Neftogorsk, Russia.
Armero, Columbia was abandoned after being wiped out in 1985 and had a population of 25,000 so that one would qualify.
Pitcher Oklahoma had over 14,000 residents in 1926. Now abandoned due to contamination.
Kowloon Walled City definitively doesn't count since it was demolished and it is now a park, with very little of the structures that stood there.
I didn't know about Beichuan. After being leveled by an earthquake and subsequent landslides, the chinese government decided to preserve the ruins as they were, creating a memorial that people could visit. The city was reconstructed some kilometers away.
You can see some semi destroyed buildings with stabilizing supports, informative billboards and wooden paths for visitors to walk through the ruins.
I think it is scaring to think that there should be maybe hundreds of bodies still buried under all those debris.
Visitors entering to the destroyed city and people conmemorating an anniversary of the quake.
The earthquake triggered landslides that changed the flow of some rivers, like this one that goes through a tunnel and then over a destroyed bridge before spiling out in a waterfall.
very cool. Add it to my itinerary on my next trip to China.
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How about Villaggio Coppola, Italy? Though technically not 100% abandoned, I'd think the Parco Saraceno area qualifies. According to this New York Times article:
While many structures are abandoned, a few residents were able to negotiate amnesties with local authorities in the late 1980s and early 2000s, to avoid eviction. Some still live there. Other abandoned buildings have squatters. But Parco Saraceno receives little in the way of municipal services, existing in a quasi-legal limbo, and inhabitants did not want their full names published because of the village’s gray legal status.
In 2010, those Chinese ghost cities were certainly not a myth, its only been in recent years that they've started to fill up.
Kangbashi New District in Ordos had for years less than 10% of its anticipated population, although now its almost full (according to some).
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