Full Description
Discover how modern life is defined by constant creation, abandonment and collapse, and why ruins are no longer relics of the past but a defining feature of the present.
This is the age of ruins. The wreckage of our speeding, super-sized era can be found on the Moon, at the bottom of the sea, in the internet's haunted attics, in desecrated jungles and in abandoned shopping malls. We live amid the accumulating debris of an economy that never stops producing, creating mountains of things that rarely last.
Unlike the reassuring relics of the past, today's ruins are unsettled and unstable. They are not fixed in time, but shifting, uncertain and often reversible: virtual worlds can be rebooted, retail parks revived, ecosystems rebuilt.
Across 21 case studies, New Ruins explores:
Abandoned technologies, space junk and obsolete digital worlds.
Dead malls and empty retail parks.
Ghost cities, shrinking towns and unfinished megaprojects.
Polluted rivers, collapsing coral reefs and damaged ecosystems.
Extracted landscapes, from deforested jungles to mined environments.
The strange "zombie" afterlives of places that are ruined yet still active.
Together, these places reveal a world where obsolescence and ruination are built into modern life.
Step into the unsettling reality of New Ruins and discover why you will never see the world - or its ruins - in the same way again.
Contents
Introduction
Part one: Technology
Cape Aniva Lighthouse (Russia): Nuclear ruins
Camp Century (Greenland): Polar ruins
Platform Holly (USA): Ruins to reefs
Liuting (China): An abandoned airport
Ex-data Centre (Canada): Cloud ruins
Active Worlds (Cyberspace): An abandoned alternative reality
Earth Orbit (Outer space): Space junk
The Moon (Outer space): Wreckage & rubbish left behind
Part two: Culture
Hyde Library (England): A civic ruin
Atafona (Brazil): Seaside ruins
The New World Department Store (Thailand): Shopping mall ruins
Newcastle's Shields Road. (England): A high street in ruins
Alpine Village (Italy): Ruins of rural desertion
Forest City (Singapore): Speculation ruins
Ushaw College (England): Ex-seminary
Palmyra (Syria): A ruin ruined by Islamic State
Part three: nature
Sumatra (Indonesia): Remnant jungle
Almería (Spain): Ruined soil
The Great Barrier Reef (Australia): Bleached reef
The Ganges (India): Ruined river
Lahore (Pakistan): Ruined air
Bibliography
Index
Picture Credits
About the Author
