Ghost Towns of the World

I need to get a TON of work done today (and install a new refrigerator), so I'm going to be a little lazy and point you in the direction of a fabulous post on weburbanist.com. (Which is an awesome site, by the way.)

The title of the post is "20 Abandoned Cities and Towns from Around the World," which should be enough to pique your interest. It features towns overtaken by the Sahara Desert, abandoned Indian palaces . . . and Gary, Indiana.

But the most interesting, in my opinion, is a place known as Kowloon Walled City (shown below). According to Weburbanist:

"Kowloon Walled City was located just outside Hong Kong . . . A former watchpost to protect the area against pirates, it was occupied by Japan during World War II and subsequently taken over by squatters after Japan’s surrender. Neither Britain nor China wanted responsibility for it, so it became its own lawless city.

Its population flourished for decades, with residents building labyrinthine corridors above the street level, which was clogged with trash. The buildings grew so tall that sunlight couldn’t reach the bottom levels and the entire city had to be illuminated with fluorescent lights. It was a place where casinos, opium dens, food courts serving dog meat and secret factories ran unmolested by authorities. It was finally torn down in 1993 after a mutual decision was made by British and Chinese authorities, who had finally grown wary of the unsanitary, anarchic city and its out-of-control population."