Brasilia was designed by visionary architects as a utopian city of tomorrow. Now that tomorrow’s arrived, it appears those plans haven’t panned out.

It took just 41 months to build Brasilia, which was officially inaugurated on April 21st of 1960. The original plans called for a resident population of 500,000 but as of 2011, five times that number lived in the city and its surrounding metropolitan area. Over 50 years of unplanned urban sprawl has resulted in dysfunctional neighborhoods blighted by abandoned structures of all shapes and sizes.

Typical of Brasilia’s dark side is the Torre Palace Hotel. Built in 1973 and boasting 14 stories with a total 140 rooms, the hotel closed in 2013 – a victim of unsolvable financial disagreements among the original builder’s heirs.

Photographer Ricardo Padue and Flickr user -Paulo -Bragga (collspooky) document the current sorry state of the once-swanky former hotel now taken over by looters, squatters and the homeless.

Theater of Pain

Designed (like many of Brasilia’s iconic structures) by Oscar Niemeyer, the Claudio Santoro National Theater has spent a significant percentage of its lifespan closed for “repairs”. Lack of funds for operations and maintenance is the culprit here, a situation exacerbated by the world financial crisis of 2008-09. When not hosting theatrical troupes, this strikingly futuristic building shelters drug addicts and the homeless.

Sloppy Cop Shop

In some ways Brasilia is the victim of its own design: built as a beacon of enlightenment smack dab in the middle of an historically poor region, the city acted as a magnet for central Brazil’s unemployed, disenfranchised and opportunistic citizens. Unfortunately, opportunities are limited in a city whose raison d’être was to house government ministries, foreign embassies and federal employees.

One might expect the city’s police to have their hands full; yet the above Brasilia police station snapped by Flickr user Lúcio Costi Ribeiro is as abandoned as the day is long.

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Brazil Nots Abandoned Buildings Of Utopian Brasilia

What might the patterns of urban sprawl look like if humanity were to survive another thousand years or so? Artist Tom Beddard envisions fractal formations seemingly cut right into the earth, broken up by the occasional sky-high tower or curving superstructure. The architecture in this futuristic vision entitled ‘Aurillia’ ranges from bleak industrial scenes to incredibly complex city centers, all created using a fractal formula called Mandalay.

The London-based artist, who earned a PhD in laser physics before moving on to design and web development, used the Fractal-lab tool that he built himself to render the images. Fractals in visual form are generally characterized by obvious patterns, but with this formula, the resulting aerial views have a surprisingly organic look.

“What I found particularly interesting was the mix of architectural forms that could be found when certain parameter combinations create structural resonances,” Beddard told The Creators Project. “The curved domes are due to the Mandlebox sphere folding effect and the towers result from the different fold scaling of individual axes.”

We’ve seen some amazing applications of fractals and parametric designs in architecture and furniture designs, from mobile pavilions to fantasy cities, but nothing on quite this large of a scale. Check out aerial views of real-life suburban complexes and you’ll see that these patterns aren’t all that far from the patterns we’re already creating with urban development.

Suburbs are far older than most of us tend to realize, but when we talk about urban sprawl we most often think of the planned communities that popped up during the industrial revolution. Photographer Christoph Gielen spent seven years documenting some of these communities in America from a helicopter, creating a fascinating series that he calls Ciphers, which he published in a book of the same name.

Seen from within, urban sprawl seems like little more than closely-built homes that all look the same. But there is a deeper meaning to these communities that is sometimes glossed over. They were built at the height of the country’s growth phase, when driving miles to work didn’t seem like a bother because gas prices were low and expected to stay that way.

But the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry, and eventually suburbs became more of a headache and an eyesore than the pleasant communities they were meant to be. A 45-minute commute between work and home became an extremely expensive proposition, but suburban homeowners were stuck with their “American dream” hoames. Today, these relics of a time gone by are still mostly inhabited, their residents still driving long distances each day.

The goal of Gielen’s project was to draw attention to the effect these communities have on the environment. The practice of building further and further away from city centers, and in turn creating the need to use cars to drive long distances, creates an environmental burden that he calls “fascinating and profoundly unsettling.” Regardless of your opinion of these far-flung planned communities, there is a certain sort of lovely aesthetic to the patterns and shapes formed by the streets, green spaces, and tiny box houses that make up the American suburb.