Polar frame, by Dmitry Kokh, Russia. When Kokh’s boat approached the small island of Kolyuchin in the Russian High Arctic, which had been abandoned by humans since 1992, he was surprised to spot movement in one of the houses. Binoculars revealed polar bears – more than 20 in total – exploring the ghost town. Dmitry used a low-noise drone to document them. (Photo by Dmitry Kokh/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2022)

These Filipino icons of ingenuity were originally re-crafted from abandoned US army jeeps after the second world war, and helped to establish a new system of urban transportation. Jeepneys are being phased to help ease city congestion, but the move will also cause unemployment for experienced drivers – and higher fares for commuters. (Photo by Claudio Sieber/Barcroft Media)

Built for over a million people, the city of Ordos was designed to be the crowning glory of Inner Mongolia. Doomed to incompletion however, this futuristic metropolis now rises empty out of the deserts of northern China. Only 2% of its buildings were ever filled; the rest has largely been left to decay, abandoned mid-construction, earning Ordos the title of China's Ghost City.

This computer image provided Monday March 17, 2014 by the Press Office of socialist candidate to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, shows a tunnel of abandoned railway from the 19th century, now ramshackle and overgrown, turned into a cinema. Hidalgo’s plan envisions not just a green space but in the tunnels, places for farming fish and mushrooms. (Photo by AP Photo/Anne Hidalgo's Press Office)

In this Tuesday, March 20, 2018 photo, a Vampire Bat drinks bovine blood in the Criaturas de la Noche (Creatures of the Night) Bat House, the Audubon Zoo's new night house in New Orleans. The various species are all from Central and South America, and the building's interior simulates an abandoned warehouse set up to protect Mayan artifacts during a dig. (Photo by Gerald Herbert/AP Photo)

In this November 18, 2014 photo, Murshida, 12, sits on the lap of her mother Marjina as the train leaves for their village in West Bengal, at a railway station in New Delhi, India. Six months ago, Marjina stepped off a train in New Delhi with her two children, hoping to find a better life after her husband abandoned them without so much as a goodbye. The family spent their days at a landfill picking through other people’s garbage to find salvageable bits to resell or recycle. After six months of poverty, illness and shame, they returned to that train station in New Delhi, headed back to an uncertain future to their hometown in West Bengal. (Photo by Altaf Qadri/AP Photo)

Grey seal pup “Nikolaus” licks a window at the seal enclosure in Friedrichskoog, Germany, 19 December 2014. The pup was abandoned by his mother and would not have a chance at survival without human help. Nikolaus will be fed at the enclosure for two to three months until he has reached the minimum weight of 45 kilograms for being released. (Photo by Daniel Reinhardt/EPA)

An older model Ford Mustang sits on cinder blocks with missing wheels near an abandoned apartment building in Detroit, Michigan January 7, 2015. Detroit, also known as the Motor City, is the historic hub of automobile manufacturing in the United States. A federal judge in December 2013 formally declared the city bankrupt but it won court approval to exit bankruptcy last November. Once the proud symbol of U.S. industrial strength, Detroit fell on hard times after decades of population loss, rampant debt and financial mismanagement left it struggling to provide basic services to residents. (Photo by Joshua Lott/Reuters)