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Beschreibung

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.

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.

Über den Autor

ALASTAIR BONNETT is Professor of Social Geography at Newcastle University. Previous books include Off the Map, What is Geography? and How to Argue. He has also contributed to history and current affairs magazines on a wide variety of topics, such as world population and radical nostalgia. Alastair was editor of the avant-garde, psychogeographical magazine Transgressions: A Journal of Urban Exploration from 1994 to 2000. Alastair lives in Newcastle.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Details
Erscheinungsjahr: 2026
Genre: Importe
Produktart: Nachschlagewerke
Rubrik: Sachliteratur
Thema: Lexika
Medium: Buch
Inhalt: 192 S.
ISBN-13: 9781805703228
ISBN-10: 1805703226
Sprache: Englisch
Einband: Gebunden
Autor: Bonnett, Alastair
Hersteller: Quarto Publishing PLC
Verantwortliche Person für die EU: Petersen Buchimport GmbH, Vertrieb, Weidestr. 122a, D-22083 Hamburg, gpsr@petersen-buchimport.com
Maße: 242 x 172 x 22 mm
Von/Mit: Alastair Bonnett
Erscheinungsdatum: 08.10.2026
Gewicht: 0,616 kg
Artikel-ID: 136447791

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