Before it was abandoned in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Pripyat was a thriving Ukrainian city with a population of nearly 50,000. The relatively sudden exodus of its inhabitants left behind a physical snapshot of the times, preserved by the absence of humans intervention for fear of fallout.

Despite the dangers of returning, urban explorers have been visiting the place for years. Some photographers use cameras mounted on aerial drones to maintain a safer distance. Other in-person visitors less concerned about safety have gone in and looted old buildings. Most, though, go simply to observe, drawn to the deserted city by those mysterious forces that attract people to derelict places — embodied history, transgressive impulses and human curiosity among them.

Such dangerous or hard-to-reach abandoned places can particularly alluring, especially when their stories are compelling. Take Hashima, just one of many Japanese islands but unusually packed with old buildings. A thriving coal-mining city in times past, “Battleship Island” once had the highest population density on planet — until a drop in coal production led to its desertion. In recent years, more and more photos and videos of the place have proliferated thanks to the internet, in turn raising questions about how much to repair, restore or change it in order to make it more accessible for an increasing number of people visiting by boat.

While some architectural artifacts in remote locations like this have been left largely alone by visitors or modified simply to accommodate tourists, others have gone through generations of much more radical change. Off the coast of Great Britain, army and navy sea forts have been turned into everything from private retreats and luxury resorts to pirate radio stations and rogue micro-nations. Here, a combination of factors, including abandonment by the government and somewhat more accessible (yet still aquatic) locations have conspired to make these structures more appealing for different kinds of adaptive reuse.

Preservation, Restoration & Contention

In central locations with more people (and thus opinions) the fate of historical places has often been the subject of controversy. In many cities, preservation of a current state tends to win out. Even such a seemingly neutral position can be contentious, though, particularly when efforts to preserve are partial or seem superficial, as in the case of ‘ghost facades‘ where only thin surfaces are saved.

Rote historicism is a simplistic default that can lead to strange and unexpected results and extreme scenarios, like cities demolishing entire buildings to “preserve” the appearance of historical skylines.

In other cases, restorations are pursued, though choosing a target point of time or period can be fraught — some buildings have been changed substantially over centuries, making it challenging to decide what aspects to restore. Either way, renovations involve modifications, which can quickly divide people who crave a kind of physical authenticity from those who embrace the notion that architecture necessarily changes over time — the situation of Notre Dame after the fire illustrates the point. Supporters of extensions and additions that don’t match the original argue that visible differences will help people in the future understand what is truly old and new, while critics note that most famous old structures have already been damaged, rebuilt and changed for centuries. There is no single solution.

Ruination, Rediscovery & Reclamation

There are people, too, who think that historical ruins should simply be left alone to decay. Along those lines, many building infiltrators and urban explorers in the United States, Europe, Asia and other parts of the world where urbex is popular follow an unwritten code to leave no trace of their presence, allowing subsequent visitors to experience a disused space as they did. There is beauty in glimpsing snapshots of history and watching nature slowly reclaim a structure.

Some abandoned places endure through careful consideration and the avoidance of further damage, but many persist in their current form simply because they are less accessible in the first place — the latter status applies to many underwater towns and archaeological sites as well as underground tunnels, crypts and caverns.

Once rediscovered, though, the fates of such places depend on where they are located and current attitudes toward ruination, preservation and restoration, which continue to change over time, much like the locations in question will do … with or without further human intervention.

Cities like London, Amsterdam and Rome bloom like vivid living organisms in a series of creative road network visualizations, each one as unique as a snowflake. The individual shapes of cities have just as much to do with these arteries multiplying into wispy branches as they do geography, topography and architecture, notes data scientist Craig Taylor, and when they’re rendered in color and animated, they take on an unexpected abstract beauty.

The animations represent how far you can drive out of various city centers within thirty minutes. Taylor chose the “top 40 places to live” as indicated by the Mercer Livability Index as his subjects. The time-drive analysis is based on “an optimistic view” of zero traffic. Taylor began with the U.K. before creating a visualization for the European Union and another for the top 10 world’s most livable cities of 2018.

“For the past six months I have been fascinated by the concept of making city networks look like living corals,” says Taylor. “The varying patterns of urban forms are inherently dictated by their road network; a complex, seemingly organic connection of links moving people across their city. Like branches of coral they have a pattern and a function, I chose to expose this pattern and manipulate it to become something far more conceptual. However, whilst being incredibly beautiful they are derived from various geo-spatial analysis of drive-times catchments making them somewhat informative as well.”

The project comes to life in two animated videos, and it’s also available as a high-resolution poster. Taylor goes into detail about how the visualizations were created at Towards Data Science.

Amsterdam, Zurich, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Vancouver, Oslo and more are all great cities of the world which are succeeding in making the lives better for their residents via innovative transportation policies. Over the years, Streetfilms producers have “visited many places we thought were doing best practices.” This group of videos they created along the way highlights amazing urban environments around the world.

“Founded in 2006, Streetfilms has become the go-to organization for educational films about sustainable transportation, and inspires action and behavioral change worldwide. Individuals, public agencies, non-profit organizations, schools, and transportation advocacy groups use Streetfilms to educate decision makers and make change for livable streets in their communities.” View more here.

The iconic ‘HOLLYWOOD’ sign has loomed over La La Land for almost a century, inspiring overseas wannabes to “sign” up with homegrown copies.

Hurray for HOLLYWOOD signs – may they be fruitful and multiply! And multiply they have, though the “original” itself is a shortened version of a “HOLLYWOODLAND” sign erected in 1923 to advertise an under-construction housing development. As time passed and the sign became symbolic of Tinseltown, municipalities far and wide were moved to stick their own monikers on the nearest available mountainside. The “RASNOV” sign above, situated a little too conspicuously in front of a 13th-century fortress in Transylvania, salutes the rugged region’s recent prominence as a major motion picture filming location.

The above images of the RASNOV sign date from between 2008 and 2010, and were photographed by Flickr members Bogdan Morar, Horia Varlan, and Inmobiliaria Lares, respectively.

BRASOV-wood?

Not to be outdone by its upstart next-door neighbor, the much larger town of Brasov erected its own white-block-letter sign celebrating, er, the rugged region’s recent prominence as a major motion picture filming location.

To Brasovians’ credit, their sign doesn’t intrude upon the scenic view of any medieval castles so it’s got that going for it, which is nice. Flickr members Chris Booth (monkeypuzzle) and ccarlstead snapped the snazzy ‘sylvanian sign while visiting Romania a decade ago.

Moratilla of La Mancha

Less than 100 people live in the quaint Castilian village of Moratilla de los Meleros, according to the most recent census taken back in 2004. Size doesn’t matter when it comes to having a “HOLLYWOOD” sign, however.

Captured in 2008 by Flickr member sécolectivoforzoso, the town also boasts streets dubbed “Hollywood Blvd”, “Sunset Blvd” and “Melrose Ave.” All par for the course since Hollywood and Moratilla became Sister Cities in 2008, prompting the latter to play its part by getting the letters out.

Perth Of A Nation

Is a mountain backdrop really necessary for a HOLLYWOOD-style sign? Maybe not – we see you nodding, city of Perth – but it sure doesn’t hurt. The photo above, taken by Flickr member Michael_Spencer in August of 2006, seems to link the sign with a Red Bull air race held over the foreshore of the Western Australian town.

“It’s only a temporary structure,” noted Flickr member David Fisher (Pgd) in November of 2007 but much like the large, block-lettered “3D TORONTO” sign, Perth’s self-titled homage to all things Hollywood may have grown too popular to remove.

Modest Model

Everything may be big in Texas but here in the model village of Bekonscot, things are smaller than life – and that’s by design. Bekonscot was conceived and constructed by Roland Callingham of Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, UK in the pre-war era and Callingham, who passed away in 1961, is buried there. That’s his memorial stone above, overlooked by the model village’s miniature HOLLYWOOD-esque sign, as captured by Flickr member Matt Brown in July of 2018.

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Tinsel Towns 10 International Hollywood Sign Homages

A London architect has is working to sketch a new city each day, mining his imagination and experience for fresh ideas for a full year, a practice inspired in part by the failures of modern urban planning.

Peter Barber is sharing the results of his work online, driven by an architectural theorist.”The idea arose from Lewis Mumford’s assertion that modernism has ‘failed to produce even a rough draft for a decent neighbourhood’, and from a pub remark made by my friend and colleague Ben Stringer, who said that you ought to be able to design a city in 10 minutes” — or at least: the idea for one.

These are not meant to be fully polished master plans, but rather an exploration of the shape of cities through quick sketches. They range in scale and region as well, from towns in Spanish ravines to fisherman islands and farming cooperatives in the United Kingdom. Among others, he has imagined a city to wrap the existing city of London, wondering what that might look like as well as how it would function and relate to the historical metropolitan heart of England.

Embedded in this experiment, though, is also a call to action for architects and planners: sketch, think and design, even if it’s speculative, just to keep ideas flowing. “I’m an inveterate sketcher. The project structures that a bit,” says Barber. “In the course of my day it’s a little 10 minute mental workout, kind of light relief too, and a chance to think beyond the here and now. I wonder if the project will remind people about the joy of jotting down a thought in a quick sketch, the sketch book as a place to escape to, a place to be playful, dreamy, speculative, idealistic even.”

Of course, he also hopes some good ideas will come out of the exercise. “We need to think deeply about our priorities and how those might be reflected in the production and arrangement of space and how we want our cities, towns, villages to be designed,” he explains In designing, he is also researching, and thinking about what’s already built. “To a significant extent the layout of our cities, and London is a very good example, are products of neo-liberal economics, the commodification of housing and the arbitrary flow of global capital. In London, which is surely one of the richest cities the world has ever known, this is leading to misery and a segregated city, with 170,000 homeless people and 20,000 empty investment flats, while social housing bequeathed to us by a more idealistic post-war generation is bulldozed.” Of course, one always has to be careful, too: architects are notorious for thinking about city plans first in terms of buildings, and only later in terms of practical considerations.