Speaking for the US many populated arid areas are completely unsustainable as population centers (ironically also where most people in the US have been moving for awhile now), especially because water resources haven’t been managed rationally in many arid areas. This story will absolutely be a global one though, see Tehran for one massive example, Lake Mead for another. No water and deadly heat waves are going to make for limitless ghost town tourism attraction opportunities!

The future is bright for abandoned building photography communities!

  • hansolo@lemmy.today
    571·
    3 months ago

    This is actually fairly normal through human history. Oasies dry up, mines run out, rivers change, easily fortified locations prove later impractical, trade routes move due to conflict or geography. When it happens within your lifetime, it triggers the cognitive bias of loss aversion. You feel it personally. When it happens a century or two before, it’s a curiosity.

    I’ve spent a lot of time in dying or ghost towns, and no one owes any human settlement the right to exist in perpetuity. If humans vanished tomorrow, who would mourn your or my hometown?

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
      6·
      3 months ago

      Years ago, I went with a girlfriend to visit her relatives who lived in several rural Minnesota towns. As we drove down the highway, we saw lots of little towns with 3 and even 2 digit populations. Some towns were one intersection, sometimes without even a traffic light, but they’d always seem to have a post office, and a couple of bars.

      In one low 2 digit small town, her relatives made up nearly half the population, and she took me through several empty houses and buildings that used to belong to relatives, all unlocked. One was an old abandoned forge where some great-great relative had been a blacksmith long ago. We stayed in a family-owned house that was fully furnished, but nobody lived there since an uncle passed away several years before.

      That trip was about 50 years ago (!), and many of those towns were already on a long decline back then. Surely many of them have collapsed since then, and emptied out.

  • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    411·
    3 months ago

    I in a city that is a confluence of two rivers and the next city over is known for its aquifer.

    Yet, the city government has hired consultants to come up with ideas for how to handle expected water shortages in the area as a result of development. Not to get all /c/collapse but it sure does make me feel negative about humanity’s effect on the planet.

    Add to the list Mexico City, which hasn’t had water for a while.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
      51·
      3 months ago

      if you build a city in a DESERT or arid regions, one should be cognizant of the expectation of water shortage.

      • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        5·
        3 months ago

        Well that’s the thing. We have tons of water here. We don’t irrigate. There’s no datacenter. Yet we still managed to fuck it up.

        But I agree with your statement. Places like AZ and CA are crazy, growing lettuce and almonds and lawns and having bathtubs and pools is really bizarre behaviour in a desert. We’ve really lost touch with nature.

  • tensorpudding@lemmy.world
    28·
    3 months ago

    I suspect coal country in Kentucky, WV and rural PA and Virginia and the western plains in Nebraska and Kansas, which are already severely stressed with population loss, will see some real ghost towns soon. Especially if the Ogallala aquifer dries up in the latter case.

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
    181·
    3 months ago

    I recently took a ‘no tolls’ route south through rural Oklahoma and Texas and saw many of these dead and dying small towns.

    Many had a fat county sheriff hanging out to ticket people driving through.

    It really is sad to see it. Those people are all now living in suburbs and slowly being driven out of their neighborhoods there by cost of living too.

  • tronx4002@lemmy.world
    9·
    3 months ago

    I think this will happen for reasons other than water too. So many towns in America were built to be in close proximity to train lines, who’s locations today makes no strategic or economic sense.

    I believe many will hit critically low population levels where they can no longer support hospitals, schools, grocery stores, churches, etc

  • reddig33@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    3 months ago

    It’s happened before with mining towns and the early days of the oil boom. Lots of still abandoned towns in the middle of nowhere.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      3 months ago

      not if they’re abandoned because they don’t have accessible clean water, affordable power etc…

      people aren’t walking away from livable places.

        • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          I could see them buying up places and doing the slumlord thing but otherwise, it’ll be a net loss for them too: fewer educated workers for their empires

          but I doubt they’ll care until it hurts.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
    41·
    3 months ago

    How long before MAGAs decide to relocate homeless people to the ghost towns, then complain because they aren’t thriving in an arid desert without access to water?

  • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
    45·
    3 months ago

    You can recycle your water very well. Vegas has a very low loss rate. It will be cheaper to pipe water in to replace losses than build an entire new city.