Ghostown
A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned or largely depopulated human settlement that usually contains substantial, visible remaining buildings and infrastructure, such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it (usually industrial or agricultural) has failed or ended for any reason (e.g. mining has exhausted a local ore deposit). The town may also have declined because of natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, prolonged droughts, government actions, war, pollution, or nuclear and radiation-related accidents and incidents. The term can sometimes refer to cities, towns, and neighbourhoods that, though still populated, are significantly less so than in past years; for example, those affected by high levels of unemployment and dereliction.
The definition of a ghost town is debated amongst writers. Some restrict the term to places deserted for purely economic reasons, while others require visible remains of buildings, and still others allow for a small remaining population. Common causes of abandonment include the exhaustion of natural resources such as minerals or timber, the rerouting of railways or roads, dam construction that isolates or floods a town, armed conflict, forced displacement, and environmental contamination. Epidemics, including the Black Death and the Spanish flu, have also depopulated communities, as has long-term exposure to hazardous materials such as asbestos and lead.
Ghost towns are found on every continent, including Antarctica. Africa and the Middle East have towns abandoned because of conflict and the collapse of empires of which they were a part. In Asia, settlements linked to Gulag labour camps were deserted after the camps closed, while in Europe, urbanisation has led to the emptying of rural villages across Bulgaria, Hungary, and Spain. The Americas contain thousands of former mining and railway towns, particularly in the western United States, British Columbia, and Chile's Atacama Desert. Australia and New Zealand have their own legacy of gold rush ghost towns.
A few ghost towns have been repopulated through heritage tourism, pilgrimage, or resettlement programmes. Walhalla, Victoria, Australia grew and then shrunk correlative to gold mining operations but recently has had a tourism-driven revival. Foncebadón in Spain is slowly recovering thanks in large part to christian pilgrims stopping there on their way to Santiago de Compostela. Some ghost towns that preserve period-specific architecture have become tourist attractions or filming locations: examples include Kolmanskop in Namibia, Craco in Italy, Pripyat in Ukraine, and Bodie in the United States.
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