From time to time, I end up watching YouTube videos of people exploring abandoned places. It's rather fascinating to see the way houses and even stately homes end up just sitting there, like time capsules, for years and even decades.
Mrs. Denmarkguy and I ended up having a conversation about how neither of us could remember any abandoned places where we'd lived in our respective childhoods... and yet these filmmakers seem to find them by the 100s.
Thinking back to my childhood, I do now remember an abandoned cottage at the edge of the local woods in Denmark, where the forestry department representative evidently had lived, before the position was made redundant. But it was completely empty, stripped bare when the last person moved away, and essentially forestry department property... so it didn't really count as belonging to someone.
But the world has changed since the 1970's, and now we see population declines in many countries around the world. And so, it only makes sense that we will start to see more people dying without heirs... and their homes simply being abandoned, as there are no children... and perhaps no wills to determine what happens next. And if you own the place outright, and live in a state where property taxes merely accumulate as a lien against the property when sold, then the building can end up just sitting there and failling into decay.
It couldn't happen in the state of Washington where we live because unpaid taxes end up as "property tax foreclosure" if they go unpaid for three years.
But I digress.
I think about a nation like Japan, where the population is expected to decline by 30% over the next 50 years... how many abandoned places will there be, there? Or will they be demolished, in an organized and structured manner?
Strikes me that derelict property will become more or less inevitable in a society with a shrinking population.
It also makes me realize that I have never lived in an area/region that was in decline... mostly I have lived in boom areas. For example, when I landed in Austin, Texas in 1981, the city had about 350,000 people in the greater metro area... today that number is over 2.25 million. Even nearby Seattle had less than 3 million people when I arrived here in 2006, and now it is closer to 3.6 million.
The thing that remains interesting — and even baffling — to me is how some of the places these urban explorers visit clearly belonged to quite affluent people, and yet everything was just left in the house; furniture; clothing; kitchen inventory... like people just got up and left one day, and never looked back.
And there things sit, 20-30 years later, with things just rotting and falling apart.
I guess when you don't care what happens to a place, you just don't care."
With shrinking populations, it also makes me wonder what kind of properties will end up abandoned? Will people move from large to smaller... or will the size have no effect?
If the dwellings are not needed, obviously selling them will not be a likely option... unless they can be turned into something commercial or civic. Or will it be like some parts of cities in the US "Rust Belt" where old houses were simply bulldozed down, and the land turned into green space?
These are definitely strange times, in which we live!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!
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Created at 2025.08.23 00:07 PST
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