New Ruins: the Story of World in 21 Abandoned and Collapsing Places

In New Ruins, 21 sites challenge what we think ruins look like, offering a portrait of a world where abandonment and collapse have become normalised. 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.