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.

An young exhibitor chases his wayward pig during the Great Yorkshire Show on July 12, 2011 in Harrogate, England. The annual Great Yorkshire Show has attracted a record number of 12,700 livestock entries over the three day event. The show now in its 153rd year is Britain's leading agricultural gathering, where over 125,000 visitors come to celebrate the farming community and their way of life. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Poznań is now Poland's fifth largest city. It is sometimes claimed to be the first capital of the kingdom of Poland. Poznań has many historic buildings and sights. The European Football Championship will take place in Poznan 2012.

Photo by: tiseb ; Source: Flickr

“Izhevsk Machinebuilding Plant (Russian: Ижевский Mашиностроительный Завод) or IZHMASH (ИЖМАШ) is a weapons and motor vehicle manufacturer based in Izhevsk, founded in 1807 at the decree of Tsar Alexander I, and is now one of the largest corporations in its field. It manufactures the famous Kalashnikov series of assault rifle, along with a host of other Russian arms, including medium cannons, missiles, and guided shells”. – Wikipedia. (Photo by Pismoshnaya.ru, 2012)

The CBRE Urban Photographer of the Year competition – now in its ninth year – encourages professional and amateur photographers to capture cities at work. Here: Dog Walker – 15:00. The competition allows photographers to enter up to 24 images, one representing each hour of the day. (Photo by Johanna Siegmann)

Birds fly over the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, western Japan July 29, 2015. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing about 140,000 by the end of the year in a city of 350,000 residents, in the world's first nuclear attack. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Influenced by the shadows scorched into outdoor surfaces by the heat of the blasts 70 years ago, Reuters photographer Issei Kato pays homage to survivors, residents and historic buildings in both cities in a personal project that captures the shadows of today. (Photo by Issei Kato/Reuters)

A girl paddles on her stand-up board on the waters of Guanabara bay at Bica beach in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, January 10, 2016. Few features capture the beauty, or the problems, of one of the world's most dramatic urban landscapes like Guanabara Bay - the finger-like inlet that forms the shoreline and harbor for Rio de Janeiro. The bay, which carves into southeast Brazil from the Atlantic Ocean, literally gave Rio its name when Portuguese mariners mistook it for a “rio”, or “river”. Four centuries later, the bay is preparing to welcome another sort of seafarer – Olympic sailors, who will navigate the bay when the 2016 Rio Olympics kick off in August. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)