Urban hell: when reality looks like a still from a dystopian film (31 photos)

Imagine waking up in a dystopian world where the trees are made of plastic, the streets are littered with tons of garbage, the rivers are filled with concrete, and the sky is invisible due to constant smog. Participants in the online community Urban Hell use specific examples to prove that “urban hell” does not exist only in the imagination. There are places where it is, unfortunately, real.





1. Magnitogorsk, one of the most polluted cities. Only 28% of children born in the city are completely healthy



2. A boy collects recyclables in a drain that has been turned into a garbage dump. Taimur Nagar, New Delhi





3. San Francisco, USA



4. Town square in Bartoszyce (Poland) before and after



5. Norilsk



6. Inequality in Tembisa, South Africa



7. Plastic trees



8. Photograph of Central Park during the Great Depression (New York, 1933)



9. Residential building in Hong Kong



10. Las Vegas



11. Dirty canal in Manila, Philippines



12. Burj Al Babas, Türkiye (the largest ghost town in the world)



13. Ferentari, the poorest district of Bucharest, Romania. Most of the apartments have turned into squats. They have no electricity. And all this in the European Union!



14. Macau, China



15. Huntington Beach, California, during the 1928 oil boom



16. Symbol and banner of the “urban hell”



17. 16th century mill surrounded by a new concrete building, Bulgaria



18. Guangzhou, China, view from above



19. View from the window of a New York apartment



20. Children play basketball near the John E. Amos coal-fired power plant in Poke, West Virginia.



21. "Lying skyscraper" in Moscow. Approximately 736 m long



22. "Vertical slums." Luanda, Angola



23. Margate, UK



24. Distance between two neighboring apartment buildings, Guangzhou



25. Newark, New Jersey Preschool, 1994



26. The intersection of two avenues in Sao Paulo, Brazil



27. Inequality in Mumbai, India



28. Bliska Wola Tower, Warsaw, Poland



Sunlight rarely reaches the lower floors, and some apartments are only 18 m².

29. Cemetery in Hong Kong



30. The only surviving photograph of a house demolished around 2007 in Nagoya, Japan.