History Main / DyingTown

* Perfection, Nevada from the ''Film/{{Tremors}}'' franchise is a similar example to Prosperity; the arrival of giant killer worms doesn't help much, and by the later films, the population has evidently dwindled to Bert and his son.

-->-- '''Tift Merritt''', "Laid a Highway"

May be the hometown of a cast member, and a visit to it will explain a lot about them. Sometimes overlaps with TownWithADarkSecret, especially in the mystery and horror genres. It also sometimes overlaps with WretchedHive when the problems that tend to plague impoverished towns full of people who are there because they can't get out set in, especially if the area was dependent on manufacturing and now has no livable jobs; when people get desperate, some will inevitably turn to crime, or [[DrowningMySorrows turn to drugs and alcohol in an attempt to cope with the stress]]. A common plotline in more idealistic stories is for a new inhabitant to find some way of turning things around and restoring the town's prosperity, especially if it is a CloseKnitCommunity that can rally around him. A more cynical twist has the newcomer promising this to con the remaining inhabitants out of their meager savings.

->''"They laid a highway a few years back\\

Some nights I sit and watch my home town die"''

* ''Manga/{{Trigun}}'' has a number of these, due to Planet Gunsmoke's unforgiving environment. The best example is in the 2nd episode of the TV series, where a town is rapidly depopulating due to its aquifer drying up. [[spoiler:It turns out a local robber-baron who lives on top of the aquifer was secretly draining it and storing the water in giant tanks, intending to sell it at a massive profit.]]
* In ''Manga/TegamiBachiLetterBee'', there's the town of Kyrie. Since it sits at the Yodaka side of the bridge to Yuusari (respectively the poor and middle-class regions of Amberground), one would think that it's an important center of commerce, but because the regions are heavily segregated and few people can pass between them, hardly anyone comes through. Jiggy Pepper, one of the few Yodaka residents who became a Letter Bee, helped the town by contributing his salary toward buying a bell for the newly constructed church.
* ''Anime/SakuraQuest'' is about the efforts to revitalize the town of Manoyama. The town suffers from an aging population, a struggling economy, local businesses shutting down and few tourists coming through. Unfortunately, the solution is not at all clear-cut, since while many residents agree the situation has to improve, others are apathetic or otherwise resistant to the idea of change. The protagonists in the tourism board's efforts to revitalize the town have some success, but the series ends with [[spoiler:the town considering a merger]], which leaves the future somewhat uncertain.
* In ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamTheWitchFromMercury'', Mercury itself is considered this. Though there are colonies throughout the solar system, the Mercury colony was originally a mining colony used to dig out the local {{Unobtainium}}, Permet. This made it worth maintaining despite Mercury being one of the least hospitable planets in existence, but a supply of Permet was found on the Earth's moon, and Mercury has been in decline ever since. Suletta, the protagonist, was one of the only children there when growing up, and she's basically regarded as the equivalent of a hick from the boonies. She claims that a personal dream of hers is to found a piloting school on Mercury, in the hopes that it might one day thrive again.

* One of the main recurring themes of ''ComicBook/GhostRider2022'' is how America's lesser known, underpopulated towns across its vast rural areas are much more vulnerable to be preyed on by malevolent supernatural forces, its struggling populations constantly falling under the radar of most superheroes who mainly congregate in large cities and are largely concerned with big scale events. This causes the titular anti-hero, Ghost Rider, to come to the grim realization that his nomadic lifestyle is likely one of only few reasons that America's poor, forgotten people have any hope left.

* Ta'akan in ''Fanfic/WithStringsAttached'', becoming abandoned due to the restless Baravadans going to search for things to fight out of boredom.

* Lampshaded in the ''Harvest Moon DS'' oneshot ''Fanfic/BestFriends'' when Claire mentions that Forget-me-not Valley is barely a town. It doesn't have a [=McDonald's=] or church. She disparagingly mentions that [[RetroUniverse they barely even have electricity]].
* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/36035344/chapters/89827720#workskin Chase and the Temple of Stone]]'' has Stone Town from the Anime/PokemonTheOriginalSeries series episode ''Recap/PokemonS1E40TheBattlingEeveeBrothers'' as one, whose surface prosperity is fading fast as the mines run dry of evolution stones. Its in its early stages of death but Goh can see the signs.

* Green River from ''WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTailFievelGoesWest'' is essentially this by the time the Mousekewitz family arrives, a withering old west former BoomTown. Upon seeing it Mama remarks that they'd been "schnookered".
* Dirt in ''WesternAnimation/{{Rango}}''. [[spoiler:A case of the town being killed on purpose, as the mayor deprives the citizens of water so that he can use it to buy off their land and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars create a new community while the old one is left to die]].]]

%%* ''Film/SunshineState'' John Sayles's 2002 film has a plot that largely revolves around this.
* ''Film/{{Jumanji}}'': When Alan Parrish is trapped in the board game for 26 years, his father thinks he has run away (due to their last conversation being a fight), and thus puts all his time and efforts into finding him, closing his shoe factory in the process. When Alan is freed from the game by Judy and Peter, he finds his home town in dire straits, with people on the street, main street all but shuttered, and the rest of the town choked with big boxes and speedy burgers where churches used to be. At the end, time is reset, allowing Alan to prevent this by reconciling with his father and eventually taking over the family business.
* The titular Spanish town of ''Film/{{Santoalla}}'' is this. Before Martin and Margo moved in, only the Rodriguezes were living there.

%%* ''Film/TheLastPictureShow'' is about one of these towns in 1950s Texas.
* Perigord, the setting of the last half of ''Film/{{Phantasm}} II'', as it is yet to be fully razed by The Tall Man.

* ''Film/TheReaping'': the entire town is slowly killed off one by one by the 10 plagues of Egypt which are brought upon them by a girl, [[spoiler: because everyone in the town became cultists and turned their back on God, and they sacrificed every second born child to create TheAntichrist. The girl was an angel sent by God to eliminate the entire town.]]
* ''Film/TheBigGreen'' has Elma, Texas, with bad student test scores and few employed citizens. Even the movie's programming guide says that the town is dying.

* A running subplot throughout the ''Franchise/{{Robocop}}'' franchise is Detroit being a horrible place to live in general and OCP doing its damnedest to kick residents out of their homes in order to have enough land to make "Delta City", which would both revive the city and turn it into OneNationUnderCopyright (it's also heavily implied that they want to do their "Delta City" project on Detroit because the U.S. Government has pretty much given up on trying to keep the city alive).
* ''Film/EightLeggedFreaks'' is set in [[IronicName ironically named]] Prosperity, a small mining town whose economy revolved entirely around the local gold mine. No points for guessing what happened when the vein ran dry. The film's protagonist returns to his native town after decades of absence with the noble intention of reopening the mine, only to get roped into the GiantSpider invasion the movie is all about, but in the end [[EarnYourHappyEnding he succeeds in bringing prosperity back to Prosperity]].

* Raven's Fair in ''Film/DeadSilence''. Mary Shaw has killed so much of the town's population that most of the buildings are shuttered and dilapidated.
* ''Film/GungHo'': Hadleyville, Pennsylvania, is a factory town without a factory. The residents are under the gun to convince a car company to reopen the factory before the town dies. Shortly into the first act, they manage to get a company to invest... a ''Japanese'' company. HilarityEnsues.
* The town of Ticklehead from ''Film/TheGrandSeduction'' used to be a proud fishing community. However, the collapse of the cod fishery has gutted the community, with many moving away to find work while those who choose to stay scraping by on welfare. The film's plot revolves around trying to get a plastic processing plant built in town so that the inhabitants can feel the dignity of a hard day's work again.
* ''Film/TheMilagroBeanfieldWar'': Milagro has very few young adults, as most of them leave town as soon as they can. Water being dammed up has made most of the local farmers sell their land. Finally, a planned development will raise taxes to the point where no one can afford to stay. The book also mentions that the average high school class size a decade earlier was sixteen, and that during UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar most of the male recent graduates ended up in the army and often died.
---> '''Ruby''': What good is a hometown if everyone you know is gone?
* In ''Film/ResidentEvilWelcomeToRaccoonCity'', Raccoon City is one of these instead of the urban metropolis it is in the video games. The town's economy was entirely dependant on the [[EvilInc Umbrella Corporation]], so with Umbrella moving its operations elsewhere, the only people still left are either the last few Umbrella employees that haven't transferred out yet, or residents who are simply too poor to leave.
* ''Film/TommyBoy'': When Tommy Callahan returns to Sandusky after graduating from college, he learns that several of the town's other industrial plants have been closed down. Callahan Auto is the town's only remaining major employer and if they shut down, the whole town will go under.
* Part of the BigBad's plot in ''Film/{{Gunslinger}}'' involves buying up property around the town she owns a hotel and saloon in on the off-chance that a railroad would be built through the town. However, she and her hired gun intercept the letter revealing that the railroad ''wouldn't'' go through, dooming the town to be like this. When featured on ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', due to the supporting cast just up and disappear before the climatic shootouts, Crow and Tom run with the idea that the townspeople have all died, leaving replacement sheriff Sam Bass to watch over a city of dead bodies.
* ''Film/TheBlob1988'': Downplayed. Apparently, much of the economy of Arborbille is dependent on winter tourism, but not enough snow has fallen in recent years for skiing. It hasn't led to a population drain just yet, but the town is starting to feel it.

* Dibley, in ''Series/TheVicarOfDibley'' to the point where the birth of a child was celebrated with a statue of that child.
* Figures into the first season of ''Series/{{Brockmire}}'' as Jules attempts to use Brockmire to revive the lulling attendance figures at the minor league ballpark. The general aura of the town always seems to reflect this and the fact that the team is named the frackers indicates that the town is in a co-dependent relationship with an oil company that's not beneficial to them
* It could go a long way towards explaining why many of the teenagers' goals is to get out of Lima post-graduation in ''Series/{{Glee}}''.

* The titular town of the third episode in ''Series/YGwyll'', "Penwyllt," is more of a village than a town that used to have an active quarry. Penwyllt actually is a real settlement in South Wales (rather than in Ceredigion in the show, which is the jurisdiction of the Aberystwyth police), and it used to have an active quarry, although today its main purpose is to serve as a rest stop for caving enthusiasts. The only people living InUniverse in Penwyllt are all directly or indirectly involved with the murder case.
* ''Series/TrueDetective'': Rust Cohle gets off a memorable description of some sad little dying Texas town.
--> '''Rust''': This place is like someone's memory of a town, and the memory is fading.

* On ''Series/AdamRuinsEverything'', Adam meets a 50-year-old man who is dismayed because he lost his job since the toaster factory went out of business, which was what his town was centered around. His family had worked in it for generations. Adam explains to him that just as economies grow and change, so must people. The man he's talking to decides to go BackToSchool and gain some new skills so he can get a new job.
* Camden on ''Series/MyNameIsEarl'' seems to be this. Most of its residents are low-income and uneducated, and Earl mentions that if you hadn't left town by JuniorHigh, odds are, you never would.

* ''Series/DareMe'' takes place in the fictional town of Sutton Grove, which has been ailing ever since the old tire factory closed. Exacerbating their problems is their attempt to build a football stadium, which has stalled, costing the town a lot of money. Many of the teen characters on the show openly talk about trying to leave.
* ''Series/TheMandalorian'' shows the famed [[WretchedHive Mos Eisley Spaceport]] has fallen into this following [[Film/ReturnOfTheJedi Luke and friends eliminating Jabba]]. With the main criminal element gone, the town is largely desolate and empty.
* ''Series/MidnightMass'' is set on Crockett Island, which has declined to 127 people after a major oil spill decimated the fishing industry that was the backbone of its economy. According to one of the characters, people moving away simply abandon their homes and don't even attempt to sell them anymore. The only social institution that remains is the local Catholic church.

* "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues," a 1972 top 10 hit for Danny O'Keefe about a young man living in a small, dying town somewhere in rural America and is depressed over his loneliness and that all his friends and everyone he cares for have moved away ... in the song, they've moved to "L.A." (Los Angeles).

* "Laid a Highway" by Tift Merritt, which provides our page quote.
* Music/RayStevens's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu8Vy8gZ1zA "Dear Andy Griffith"]] pays homage to a suburban town that has seen better days; the garden beds have become overrun with weeds, yard sales, cluttered lawns, pit bulls, with the banker's house turned into a funeral parlor, and the local veteran's memorial is a hangout for Goths and vampires.
* "The Day They Closed the Factory Down" by Music/HarryChapin, which he introduces on the concert album by saying, "This is about what happens to a little one-horse town when the one horse decides to up and leave."

* A large chunk of Music/UncleTupelo's catalog would fit this category.
* "North Country Blues" by Music/BobDylan.
* "Our Town" by Iris [=DeMent=].

* "My Little Town" by Music/SimonAndGarfunkel, where "nothing but the dead and dying" remain.
* "Company Town" and "Industrial Town" by [[Music/TheMenTheyCouldntHang The Men They Couldn't Hang]].
* Turns up a lot in the music of Music/StanRogers, focusing on small fishing villages in Atlantic Canada, including "Make and Break Harbour" and "Free in the Harbour". "The Idiot" focuses on a young man who left one of these towns to work the oilfields in Alberta.
* "Town with No Cheer" from ''Music/{{Swordfishtrombones}}'' by Music/TomWaits.
* "GhostTown" by Shiny Toy Guns, despite its title, is about a Dying Town that hasn't yet reached Ghost status.
* Similarly, "Ghost Town" by the Specials is about a Dying Town in 1980s Britain full of urban deprivation, violence, and unemployment.
* "Dry County", by Music/BonJovi. The singer moves to the title town (or, at least, county) that springs up when oil is struck. Then the oil abruptly runs out, and he doesn't even have enough money left to get back home.
* "Trickle Down" by Music/AniDiFranco deals with the predictable effect that a steel plant's closing has on a small town.

* "Old Coyote Town" by Music/DonWilliams.
* "Blue Collar Town" by David Goldman.
* "Telegraph Road" by Music/DireStraits follows the history of a town all the way from a single settler to its dying phase.

* "Monopoly on the Blues" by The Hangdogs.
* "A Howling Dust" by Music/{{Cormorant}} has the town (Hornitos, CA) dying towards the end.

* "Little Man" by Music/AlanJackson shows a town whose small businesses are dying off because of big chain stores.
* "Shutting Down Our Town" by Music/JimmyBarnes is about the closing of the Holden car factory in Barnes' hometown of Elizabeth, South Australia.
* Many of the ska punk band Less Than Jake's songs are about the desire to leave their boring, dying town and comiserating with other people stuck there. Such songs include "History Of A Boring Town" and "Look What Happened" among others.

* The town of Dry River in ''Podcast/TheAdventureZoneDust''. Formerly called Twin River, before the river dried up. The incorporation into the rest of the Crescent Region, spearheaded by the Mathis and Blackwell clans, is an attempt to avert this. [[spoiler: Sheriff Connors' attempt to stop the incorporation by killing Jeremiah Blackwell is his own attempt at saving the town.]]

* ''TabletopGame/DarkHeresy'':
** The world of Sinophia, at the edge of the Calixis Sector, was the staging point for the Angevin Crusade that brought the sector into the Imperium millennia ago. At that time, Sinophia's infrastructure and economy were greatly expanded to support the crusade, and the world benefitted as immigrants arrived, industry flourished, and the planet became wealthy and influential. However, as the crusade wound down and the conquered worlds settled fully into the Imperium, the importance and influence of Siophia declined. These days, the world is slowly decaying, in a perpetual economic downturn, with a shrinking population, an unmaintained infrastructure, and various noble houses bickering among one another with none able to wield the influence to steer the planet to recovery.

* Uranium, Saskatchewan in ''Theatre/RideTheCyclone'' is the "mall took over and killed off all the local business" variant, as conveyed in the "Uranium Suite" opening. Apparently "the smart ones all packed up and went," but the kids were stranded there since their parents wanted to stay.

* The titular town in ''VisualNovel/{{Echo}}'' has been in a constant state of decline for decades prior to the novel's story. It started out as your typical Gold Rush-era Boom Town that reached its peak population of 6,500 in 1877. Several mass hysteria events lead to numerous residents fleeing over the years. Other contributing factors to the town's decline were the mines shutting down in the 1940s, the railroad branch feeding into the town shutting down in the 60s, and the Interstate highway bypassing the town soon after. By 2015 (the time of the novel's main story), the population was only 50 people, with the town littered with abandoned homes, closed businesses, and disused industry. Most residents commute to the nearby city of Payton for work and school. Echo doesn't seem to have its own hospital or police department either since it's mentioned those resources come from Payton as well.

The economy, meanwhile, probably hinges on monthly benefits payments, and the local Wal-Mart is likely the de facto town meeting place. The few jobs that do still exist are either part-time and pay minimum wage with little or no benefits, or full-time unskilled labor positions that pay poorly, and have limited opportunities for advancement that are largely contingent on who you are due to rampant {{nepotism}} and cronyism; unless you belong to or are associated with one of a select few dynastic local families, you simply do not have a shot at rising through the ranks. If there is a decent-paying job available that doesn't require higher education or specialized training, it's probably dangerous, unpleasant (usually mining, waste disposal, or meatpacking), and likely to necessitate an early retirement due to the physical toll that it takes.

* "Telegraph Road" by Music/DireStraits.

[[folder:Video Games]]
* The title town of ''Franchise/SilentHill'' is an odd inversion, since in-game dialogue from the first game suggests that Silent Hill might have been a dying town several years before the game takes place, but by the time that the series kicks in, it's a popular lakeside destination for people to go on vacation.
* ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'': Santa Destroy seems to be this, or closer to the small-town version of ViceCity. It is generally portrayed as a derelict, seedy place with a [[LowerClassLout menial population]] and a notable lack of care for education, infrastructure and culture. It is heavily implied that most of the inhabitants remain there simply because they couldn't leave for one reason or another. In ''[[VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes2DesperateStruggle Desperate Struggle]]'', the city has a miraculous recovery thanks to being renovated into a tourist hotspot funded by multiple corporations.
* ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroesIII'' has Call of Battle, a region that suffered from a severe warlike conflict a long time ago, and is now a crumbled mess with very few inhabitants.
* The [[CityWithNoName nameless town]] in the middle of a steppe from ''VideoGame/{{Pathologic}}''.
* ''VideoGame/SimSeries'':
** The town in ''VideoGame/MySims'' seems to be like this when you arrive. In fact, your arrival increases the population by 25%.
** The early ''VideoGame/SimCity'' games, mainly the original and ''Sim City 2000'' feature these as scenarios where you have to help it grow. Of course, you can also build one of these yourself in Sandbox Mode if you so desire.
* There is one in ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'', which eventually becomes a GhostTown. It's [[spoiler:Tazmily Village]].
* In ''VideoGame/DreamfallTheLongestJourney'', the second game in ''VideoGame/TheLongestJourney'' series, one discovers that the Venice district of Newport, where April Ryan (the first game's protagonist) lived has been ravaged by technological Collapse. Now, homeless people can be seen on every street, and the apartment complex where April lived is now run-down and used as a base for unscrupulous experiments. In Arcadia, the city of Marcuria has begun this process after the occupation by [[TheEmpire the Azadi]], and their decision to segregate the city's considerable magic-user population and magical beings into ghettos, leaving several parts of the city abandoned.
* Mars has become this in ''Franchise/MassEffect''. According to the in-game codex, it was once considered ripe for terraforming, but mankind essentially lost interest when the Prothean mass relay was discovered and they began to spread across the galaxy and meet other races.
* Inaba in ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'' has shades of this, several stores in the central shopping area are boarded up, with many of the residents blaming Junes (a megastore) for these businesses failing, and several high school [=NPCs=] comment that they're ready to jump ship and leave town once they reach college age. [[spoiler:It's implied in the GoldenEnding that Inaba will recover, and Junes starts working with and supporting the local shops instead of displacing them. Yu comes back a year later for Golden Week in the UpdatedRerelease and ''Arena'' and the place seems fine.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}''
*** The PlayerCharacter's tribal village of Arroyo has become one due to a terrible drought, which is what kickstarts their quest when they're sent out to find the [[MacGuffin Garden of Eden Creation Kit]].
*** The town of Modoc, a prosperous farming community, is also dying at the hands of the same drought that's killing Arroyo. You can potentially save it if you help establish an alliance with a nearby people called the Slags, which will allow Modoc to thrive.
*** If you get the best ending for Broken Hills by saving it from a human/mutant race war, it trucks along fairly well...until the uranium mine runs out. Losing its economic foundation, it quickly becomes a Dying Town, and eventually a GhostTown.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'':
*** The village of Arefu, which has all of four people left.
*** Andale has a close-knit community of seven, several of whom seem oblivious to the fact that the war happened. Given the... [[ImAHumanitarian appetites]] of the locals, there's a reason why not more people move in. For long.
*** Big Town is a small refugee camp where the kids of Little Lamplight who grow too old are banished to, established in some old suburb, there is next to no food or clean water and the town is constantly beset by raiders, slavers, and super mutants.
*** The Capital Wasteland is a ''dying region'', at the start of the game most people just survive and don't really thrive, the topsoil and water supply is lousy with radiation, the region is slowly but surely being overrun by raiders, slavers and super mutants and the [[LawfulGood Brotherhood of Steel]], the only people who can make a difference, have their hands full. Naturally, this being a [[AWorldHalfFull Fallout game]], you can make things [[EarnYourHappyEnding much better]] [[DownerEnding or doom them to extinction]].
** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'':
*** There's Goodsprings, which never truly picked up in the first place. Some endings have the town prospering, or at least gaining a semblance of normalcy while other endings have the town being abandoned by all but the most stubborn for fear of the Legion or [[TheFarmerAndTheViper massacred and left to die by the Courier]].
*** Boulder is one too, having been bombed to hell during the first war with the Legion. Only a bartender and some soldiers are left.
*** Primm too, having hit by bandits recently. The NCR, independent and even some Legion endings resurrect the town to some extent.
*** Novac is in serious danger of becoming this at the start of the game, as a pack of feral ghouls has overrun the old REPCONN test site, [[ScavengerWorld the main driving economy of the town]]. Depending on how [[PlayerCharacter the Courier]] resolves some quests, the town is either abandoned or remain prosperous.
** Almost every settlement in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout4}}'' not named Diamond City, Goodneighbor, or Bunker Hill is this. The player can revitalize this combination of Dying towns and Ghost towns into a thriving network of settlements, [[EarnYourHappyEnding through great effort]].
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' features two. The town of Corel lays dying after the coal mining industry was shut down in favor of Shinra-backed mako energy and Shinra going back on thier promise to employ the Corel miners in new positions. Even the nearby Gold Saucer Amusement Park has not provided the Corel residents with employment or spillover economic prosperity. The other is the village of Gongaga which was abandoned and left to die after their mako reactor exploded. Also inverted with Rocket Town, where a small and seemingly prosperous settlement has sprung up in only a few years around a derelict space vessel sitting unused on the launchpad.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV'' finds the heroes visiting Cartanica, a once-prosperous center of industry in Niflheim. Once the area's natural resources were depleted, the Empire left the entire region to die, leaving behind derelict factories and a severely dimished population.
* One of the staples in the ''VideoGame/RollercoasterTycoon'' series is the "save the park" scenario, where you prevent a Dying Theme Park from going bankrupt. The most prominent is the "Renovation" scenario in the "Wacky Worlds" expansion for the second game where you save a [[MotherRussia Russian theme park]]. There's a specific set of scenery which is nothing but ''deteriorated Kremlin pieces'' made solely for this scenario.
** Similarly, ''VideoGame/ZooTycoon'' features a few Dying Zoo scenarios, where you essentially rebuild neglectful zoos from the ground up. Special mention goes to the "[[Film/JurassicPark Dinosaur Research Island]]'' scenario in the "Dinosaur Digs" expansion, which is presented as your typical scenario, but later on you "return" to the island in a later scene where all the dinos have escaped and you have to capture the dinos and rebuild their exhibits.
* ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'' gives us the ironically-titled "Esparanza."[[note]]Spanish for "Hope".[[/note]] Built by sailors from all over the world, Esparanza was meant to be a port town or headquarters of sorts for sailors who wanted to take a crack at penetrating the seemingly-unpassable Dark Rift. Unfortunately, no one ever passed through the Rift, and everyone who came back from the trip were hollow shells of their former selves. It didn't take very long for the hope to wither...
* Pyrite Town (and the base camp known as "The Under"), in ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'' was a former mining town, but with its mine dried up, it has fallen into a WretchedHive.
* Kakariko Village is basically this in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', but because most of its inhabitants were killed.
* ''VideoGame/ArcanumOfSteamworksAndMagickObscura'' has Dernholm. In the backstory, it was the thriving capital of the nation of Cumbria, but when their king [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope suddenly went mad with power and hatred of technology]], he dragged Cumbria into a hopelessly one-sided war against the ''much'' better-equipped nation of Tarant. When the player arrives at Cumbria in the game proper, it's lost nearly all of its power and prestige, and Dernholm itself is a barely held together village whose people desperately try to survive, but have little hope of doing so due to the king's ever-escalating insanity and his sickeningly depraved Guard Captain. [[spoiler:Depending on the player's actions, Dernholm, and Cumbria and general, can begin a slow but sure path to recovery in the epilogue.]]
* In ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'', Tristram was going through this stage during the first game, what with the demonic invasion and slowly being bled dry by a steady wave of heroes drawn to the town by said demonic invasion. Then the town completely [[DoomedHometown flatlined]] at some point before the second game.
* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'':
** Winterhold was once a grand, vibrant city that rivaled Solitude and Whiterun in sheer glamor and splendor. Then an earthquake sent 99.9% of the city (and indeed, the Hold itself) into the ocean. No one knows what exactly caused what became known as the Great Collapse, but many people, including the current Winterhold Jarl, believes that the Mage College is connected somehow. Ironically, the College itself is now the only reason anyone still cares about Winterhold. The replacement Jarl (if the Imperials win the Civil War) recognizes the reality of the situation and wants to foster good relations with the College.
** Ivarstead. One man is reluctant to allow his daughter to go to Riften with her new paramour partly because Ivarstead will have no future if more of the younger generation leaves. The main attraction of Ivarstead is that it is the closest settlement to the mountain where the legendary Gray-beards reside.
* ''VideoGame/{{Syberia}}'': Almost every location Kate travels through appears to be a half-deserted town past its prime:
** Valadilene was once world-famous for its automaton factory. Since then it seems to have fallen on hard times as the demand for Voralberg automatons decreased and many young people left the town to seek employment elsewhere. Many inhabitants fear that the death of Anna Voralberg may mean the closedown of the factory and the ultimate end of the town.
** Despite all its grandeur, there appear to be almost no students on the campus of Barrockstadt University. Local stationmaster admits that, while he still remembers days when students would come from all around the world to study in Barrockstadt, he hasn't seen a train come to the station in a very long time.
* Rapture in ''VideoGame/BioShock1'' the entire city has been torn apart by a civil war between Ryan and Atlas, and the only ones left are insane splicers. By [[VideoGame/BioShock2 the sequel]] the city is slowly crumbling as the sea starts overtaking it.
* In ''VideoGame/AfterProtocol'', when morale drops too low on a planet, your colonists will say ScrewThisImOuttaHere and abandon the colony.
* Mamon in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'' (Aktemto in the official NES release) big time, with this mining town going from decline to virtual ghost town status over the course of the game. The apparent cause is a poison gas seeping from the nearby mines, caused by the fact that the demon king Estark was sealed underground beneath the town centuries ago - and the miners had been unwittingly unsealing his prison.
* ''VideoGame/StoryOfSeasons'':
** A lot of towns are this way in ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon''. You might even have to fix the entire town up all by yourself, like in ''[[VideoGame/HarvestMoonANewBeginning A New Beginning]]''. Or maybe you just have to fix up this farm or something, like in ''[[VideoGame/HarvestMoonGBC3 GBC 3]]''.
** In ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonAWonderfulLife'' and its DistaffCounterpart, the protagonist is a city-goer who decides to take over their deceased father's old farm. The local town in Forget-me-not Valley is a sleepy village will less than 30 inhabitants. By the end of the game, most adults are either middle-aged or seniors while the very few kids in the town are all most likely going to leave. However, by the sequel ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonDS'' the town is just fine a century later. Admittedly, ''DS'' is very loosely a sequel and more-or-less only used that concept in order to [[GenerationXerox excuse reusing all the characters and saying they're reincarnations/descendants]].
* ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyI'': As a way of deconstructing OneHundredPercentCompletion, [[spoiler:the titular town becomes this if you 100% the game (with people losing interest by Etria's main attraction, the labyrinth, not having any mysteries anymore)]].
* ''VideoGame/TheVanishingOfEthanCarter'' is set in a small mining town that has been abandoned for well over a decade after a mine collapse killed off its economy.
* Ghost Port Kolobos in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyBraveExvius'' isn't quite a GhostTown yet despite its name, as it does have some permanent residents and a couple of shops, but large sections of the town are falling apart, and everyone makes it clear that the town currently doesn't have long before it's completely abandoned.
* ''VideoGame/NightInTheWoods'' is set in Possum Springs, an old blue-collar mining town in the Midwest. The mine's closed up, and the jobs are gone. Nobody there's got any real future, and they all know it. [[spoiler:[[TownWithADarkSecret A cult, which worships an eldritch god supposedly living in the mine, hopes that by appeasing their patron deity with sacrifices they can revive the town.]]]]
* Stalwart Village in ''Videogame/PillarsOfEternity'' ''The White March'' is in decline due to the Hollowborn epidemic, ogre attacks, and spending what little money they have left on expeditions to restart the legendary White Forge in Durgan's Battery which have yielded no results [[spoiler:and are actually ''provoking'' the ogre attacks since the ogres see the expeditions as invasions of their territory.]] Restarting the White Forge at the end of Part I breathes new life into the village as their newfound ability to manufacture Durgan Steel brings in a lot of money and business [[spoiler:but puts them at even greater risk in Part II in the form of the colossal golems tasked with killing anyone who discovers the secrets of the White Forge, the Eyeless.]]
* Tumbleweed in ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2'' was formerly the hub town of its region, until the railroad was routed through the nearby town of Armadillo instead. This, alongside raids by outlaw gangs and an outbreak of cholera, results in the town being completely abandoned by the time of ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption'' [[spoiler:four years later]].
* The town of Hellawes in ''VideoGame/TalesOfBerseria'' ends up becoming one [[NiceJobBreakingItHero because of the party]]. Early on Velvet firebombs the entire port to steal the [[CoolShip Van Eltia]], the fire spreading out of control ends up sinking the merchant fleet that gave the town its main income, and the wreckage in the bay makes it impossible for anything but smaller ships to get through, utterly crippling its economy. A later incident ends up flooding the town with refugees and having the Abbey cast them off as no longer worth investing resources into, draining any potential the town had to recover.
* A few examples exist in the ''VideoGame/TrailsSeries'':
** [[GrimUpNorth North Ambria]] is a dying nation rather than just one town or city. Decades before the main plot began, a supernatural incident called the Salt Pale disaster occurred. A giant pillar of salt descended from the skies, turning anything it came into contact with into salt. This made a lot of the nation's land uninhabitable, destroyed a lot of infrastructure, and killed a third of its population. During this incident, the Grand Prince in charge of the nation fled, which enraged the citizens enough to start a coup, converting the former principality into a democracy. However, the Salt Pale eroded the soil and made it difficult to farm anything, reducing trade and crippling the economy. To make up for this, former army soldiers converted the military into a [[PrivateMilitaryContractors jaeger corps]] to bring in money and have a functioning economy.
** Jurai is also an example, albeit much less extreme than North Ambria. Jurai used to be a port city, but a massive typhoon ended up destroying its ports and reducing trade, causing an increase in poverty. It also doesn't help that Jurai borders North Ambria, meaning it was indirectly hit by the Salt Pale disaster since Jurai lost a huge trade partner. This gets exploited by [[EvilChancellor Chancellor Osborne]], who manages to convince most of Jurai's leaders to let Jurai be absorbed into [[TheEmpire Erebonia]] with the promise of new trade. [[spoiler:In a case of VillainHasAPoint, the epilogue of ''Cold Steel IV'' reveals that some citizens of Jurai still want to remain a part of Erebonia even when rumors of reclaiming its independence pop up because of how much Jurai's economy has improved since it was annexed]].
* ''VideoGame/SuikodenV'': Lordlake. Once a beautiful and popular tourist destination in Falena, it was reduced to a scorched, dust-filled hellhole after being declared a pariah city in the aftermath of the Lordlake Incident. Most the original inhabitants left, leaving only the infirm and the stubborn in the city. [[spoiler:Fortunately, thanks to the actions of the protagonists during the Godwin war, Lordlake was revived and the population is working hard to restore the place to its former glory.]]
* ''VideoGame/OctopathTraveler'': Orewell is said to have been a thriving mining town at some point but by the time the events of the game take place, it's been reduced to a desolated, run-down settlement full of depressed, hopeless townsfolk.
* It is heavily implied the Slums of ''VideoGame/{{Stray}}'' used to be vast and sprawling, yet by the time the Cat falls down there the majority have been overrun by parasitic Zurks, with only a scant few pockets still populated by RidiculouslyHumanRobots.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
%%* Joe Harman's hometown in ''Literature/ATownLikeAlice''.
* Creator/StephenKing is fond of setting his books in Dying Towns.
** ''{{Literature/Carrie}}'': Although Chamberlain, Maine is described as a virtual ghost town in the novel, it is more on its way to becoming one (thus fitting the trope), as there are still some locals who have remained. However, with Thomas Ewen High School in ruins, nearly the entire junior and senior class dead (after having been killed in a huge fire Carrie sets on prom night) and hundreds more dead or feared dead following Carrie's rampage, the town is shell-shocked and goes into a catatonic state of mourning. In the aftermath, the town's industrial base is ruined (either having closed due to lack of work or the entire workforce quitting/leaving town) and people are moving out of town ... multiple ones on a daily basis. The thriving small town of Chamberlain virtually changes into a dying town within weeks, well on its way to a GhostTown.
** ''Literature/SalemsLot'' features a town that's already like this... and then the process is accelerated to GhostTown levels by a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Vampire]] invasion.
** Oatley, New York, in ''Literature/TheTalisman''.
** Arnette, Texas, where ''Literature/TheStand'' opens, is one of these even before [[ThePlague Captain Trips]] hits.
** Derry, Maine, at the end of ''Literature/{{IT}}'' is implied to be heading this way, but ''Literature/{{Insomnia}}'' (set in Derry a few years later) shows it to be bouncing back.
* [[Literature/IAmNotASerialKiller Clayton]] is a town where infection set in recently, but it's declining fast. John compares it to roadkill, a town rotting by the side of the road. By ''I Don't Want to Kill You'', it's begun to border on the WretchedHive variant, with dirty secrets popping up everywhere. TheFilmOfTheBook milks this for all its worth, atmosphere-wise, resulting in a muted, arthouse gothic feel.
* ''Literature/MegLangslowMysteries'': Clay County, by "The Hen of the Baskervilles." The killer's MotiveRant claims that the county is "dying by inches" due to their economy drying up and prominent citizens repeatedly being arrested for murder. By the end of the book, the entire sheriff's department is about to be laid off [[{{Nepotism}} except for the sheriff and three deputies who are related to the mayor or the sheriff]]. And they're only being paid to work part-time.
* ''Film/MuchAdoAboutGrubstake'': Grubstake, Colorado was once a prominent mining community before the gold and silver began to run low. The town's current population is sixty-two (mostly prospectors who lack the resources to move and still manage to extract just enough gold dust to pay some of their bills), and only one train passes by every month. So when a mysterious man shows up trying to buy mines as a supposed resort attraction, sixteen-year-old boarding house owner Arley, the orphaned daughter of a miner, smells a rat.
* Innsmouth in ''Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth'' looks like one of such towns. It's actually a TownWithADarkSecret.
* The last chapters of ''Literature/OneHundredYearsOfSolitude'' presents Macondo as one of those after the banana boom ended tragically. [[spoiler:It never becomes a full GhostTown because a natural disaster hits hard at the end of the novel, completely destroying what little is left.]]
** In other books by Gabriel García Márquez which share the [[BuildingOfAdventure Macondo]] setting, the town is usually in this stage.
* The novel ''Casas Muertas'' by Venezuelan author Miguel Otero Silva, is set in a town which is half this, half GhostTown, and strongly transitions to the latter during the story. The sequel, ''Oficina Nº 1'', is set in the BoomTown where the protagonist moves after realizing that nothing can save her little town from dying.
%%* Thalia, Texas, in Larry [=McMurtry=]'s ''Film/TheLastPictureShow''. Changed to Anarene, Texas in the film version.
* ''Literature/AmericanGods'': Shadow finds a lot of these on his road trip (some of them, such as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo,_Illinois Cairo]], are TruthInTelevision). He settles down for a time in one town that seems to be surprisingly immune to the economic ebb. He should have paid a bit more attention to that...
* ''Literature/TheWordAndTheVoid'': Hopewell, Illinois is a dying steel mill town peopled by the old, the broken, and those too young to leave yet. Several demonic invasions later it's still standing, but not by much. It says a lot about the setting that [[TheSoulless the demons]] and [[TheHeartless the feeders]] aren't the most depressing things about it.
* Creator/JeanShepherd gave this feeling to Hammond, Indiana in his collection of short stories, ''In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash''.
* Grantville in ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo'', is a small mining town in West Virginia, slowly being hollowed out by mine closures. Then it's teleported into the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar and becomes one of the most important centers of technology and learning in the world. In the early novels, the older residents mention that they'd once resigned themselves to watching the town die as all the young people left for greener pastures. Now their main problem is that too many people want to move in too quickly.
* Branton Hills in ''Literature/{{Gadsby}}'' starts off stagnating, but it improves thanks to the title character.
* Coalwood, West Virginia is the local setting for ''October Sky'' (originally named ''Rocket Boys''), a real-life story about Homer Hadley Hickam Jr. and his dreams of becoming an engineer for NASA. (Today, [=McDowell=] County, of which Coalwood is the seat, [[FromBadToWorse has the highest rate of drug overdoses in the United States]], mostly due to opioids.)
* ''Literature/AllTheWrongQuestions'' takes place in one of these, called Stain'd-by-the-Sea. It used to be a prosperous town thanks to ink harvesting industry, but eventually the number of ink-creating octopi started dwindling, so the biggest company in town, Ink Inc., drained the surrounding oceans to get at the remaining ones. This made things worse, as it killed of the rest of the octopi, and screwed up a lot of other businesses that relied on tourism. By the time the series starts, almost everyone has left to find better opportunities in the city.
* ''Literature/TheLostFleet'' series details a number of solar systems that had once been host to heavy traffic but have been bypassed by the time the titular fleet passes through because the PortalNetwork rendered the old mode of system-to-system hyperspace travel obsolete. Some of these systems have been [[GhostPlanet completely abandoned]], while others still have dwindling populations as more and more of the younger generation emigrate, or are conscripted. On at least one occasion, a CompanyTown that existed solely to service a now-disused waystation in a particularly bleak system is only clinging to life because the corporation didn't bother sending anyone to take the workers off-world after they were laid off. On another occasion, the titular Lost Fleet passes through a system whose main habitable world was once [[PleasurePlanet famed for its natural beauty and home to numerous luxury resorts]], but [[ForeverWar a hundred years of constant war]] haven't been good for the tourist trade.
* Rust Belt suburb Grosse Point, Michigan in ''Literature/TheVirginSuicides''. Its ApatheticCitizens are in denial about it until it's too late, and its teenagers just want to get out as fast as possible.
* Cullerne, the setting of ''Literature/TheNebulyCoat'' by John Meade Falkner, is a harbour that lost its purpose when the river silted up.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
** ''Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook to the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Railway'' mentions the town of Gravelhang, which was once the centre of the marble industry until the building of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork used up all the marble. It now comprises a population of 45 and one shop that sells canned food, tobacco, and banjo strings.
** ''The Compleat Discworld Atlas'' describes Chirm as having once been famed for oysters, but since the oyster beds have dried up, the remaining inhabitants survive by collecting driftwood.
** Exactly what changed Zemphis from the bustling market town seen in ''Literature/EqualRites'' to the lawless ViceCity described in ''Literature/RaisingSteam'' and ''Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook'' isn't clear. The ''Atlas'' mentions the difference but not what caused it. It seems like all the trade routes are still in place but the city's own attitude to them has shifted.
* ''Literature/TheLockedTomb: Literature/GideonTheNinth'': The Ninth House has been reduced to an increasingly small number of increasing ancient retainers, worshipers, and necromancers. Its population below the age of sixty appears to consist of one morose cavalier, two teenagers, and no one else. [[spoiler: This is partially the result of its rulers sacrificing an entire generation of babies to ensure their child was born an overwhelmingly powerful necromancer.]] It's not entirely clear what happened to everyone else, although the house was already dying before they resorted to this. According to Silas Octakiseron (who, it should be noted, is an asshole), the House was never supposed to exist in the first place and therefore has been dying out for ten thousand years.
* In ''Literature/IfIFallIfIDie'', Will's hometown of Thunder Bay, Ontario is suffering this fate due to the decline in the grain trade.
-->'''[=MacVicar=]''': It's different than it was in your mother's day. At that time, things made sense here. We put the bad guys in jail and sent the good guys to work. But once the grain stopped coming on those rails and went east to China, things took a turn. Now we've got the highest crime rate on the Lakes, outside Chicago. The only grain people're interested in is the fermented kind. The pourable version. The kind that helps you forget the better times and hunker down into the new.
* ''Literature/RegardingThe'': Dry Creek is one of these in the first book. It used to be a popular tourist destination thanks to its natural springs and creeks, but those dried up thirty years ago; now, the town has to pay [[BigBadDuumvirate Sally Mander and "Dee" Eel]] for a place to swim and drinking water, and most businesses have closed up or moved to the still-thriving Springfield. [[spoiler:Ultimately, Mander and Eel are revealed to have been the ones who capped off the geyser feeding Dry Creek in the first place; when they're arrested for this, the geyser is let loose and the town (renamed Geyser Creek) is able to thrive again.]]
* ''Literature/DearAmerica'': In ''Christmas After All'', Willie Faye's hometown of Heart's Bend, Texas became this due both to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl hitting it hard. It came to a head when the train started speeding by the station instead of stopping by. It was also a very small area before that, which results in Willie Faye getting CultureShock when she's sent to live with protagonist Minnie and her family in Cincinnati.
* ''Literature/{{Pale}}'': The fictional tourist town of Kennet, Ontario, on the shores of Lake Superior, is only barely hanging on thanks to the yearly tourist season, with all other jobs having dried up. The AnthropomorphicPersonification of the town, a spirit named Ken, exhibits hopelessness at every turn, and also reflects the town's alcohol and drug problems. All Ken has left is a dimming sense of pride.
* Sunny and Maxon from ''Literature/ShineShineShine'' grew up in Yates County, Pennsylvania, where oil was discovered in 1859. When the oil ran out, the wealthy inhabitants sold coal, then lumber. The money finally ran out for good in 1952, leaving a decaying town with unusually large houses.
* ''Literature/{{Stinger}}'': Inferno, Texas is a mining town with no minerals left. The school just got shut down and everyone is in bad financial shape besides Cade, whose prosperity comes from organized crime.
* ''Literature/LivvieOwenLivedHere'': When Nabor's paper mill shut down a decade ago, most other businesses did too. Simon used to work at the mill, but after he lost his job and a HouseFire damaged the family home, the Owens were forced to move out.
* ''Literature/DaughtersOfDarkness1996'': Briar Creek was established as a gold rush town back in the 19th century, but after the gold dried up it's slowly been on the decline, with most residents not having much money and the buildings falling into disrepair. It's mentioned that "the wilderness is taking it back" and a lot of young people move out as soon as they can, because there are few opportunities and not a whole lot to do. Both Mark and Mary-Lynette find Briar Creek [[SmallTownBoredom pretty dull]]. In contrast, the Redfern sisters – especially Jade – find it exciting, because they rarely got to leave the enclave where they were raised and they're free to do almost anything they want here, plus it's so small and out-of-the-way they're unlikely to run into any [[WainscotSociety Night People]] who would turn them in.
* ''Literature/MermaidsOfErianaKwai'': The island nation Eriana Kwai's economy used to be based on tourism and fish. But ever since the merman king Adaro began his war against the island, both activities have become unsafe because mermaids have been known to snatch people from boats or beaches. Now almost every business on the island has closed except for the grocery store, where the shelves are often bare. Islanders survive by hunting, although game has been so overhunted that there's not much left, and by accepting aid from the U.S. and Canada.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
%%Please note that this page is for cities which are ''on the road'' to becoming ghost towns, not already there. Places like Centralia, PA or Chernobyl belong on the GhostCity or GhostTown pages, not here.
!!North America
* Dubuque, Iowa, similar to Atlantic City, was this before Iowa legalized riverboat gambling. The revenue of the casinos has clearly gone into the city and it is now a popular tourist destination with its renovated historic sites, the nearby Film/FieldOfDreams, and ski resort.
* Big chunks of rural America are filled with places like this. In the 1870s, over 70 percent of the population worked in agriculture; today, it's around 0.8-1.3 percent (depending on how you count seasonal labor and migrating farmhands). This is mostly due to changes in technology of a hundred different kinds: scientific advances have made farmland much more efficient, transportation technology and infrastructure have made it possible to keep food fresh longer and get it farther in that time, machines do the work of multiple people... so all the people who used to work in rural areas now live in suburban or urban areas, so rural areas are now populated much more sparsely than they once were. A lot of small farming towns in the Great Plains feature mostly-boarded-up downtowns and an average population age in the 50's or older. Parts of the (much drier) High Plains fared even worse and completed the transition to full-on GhostTown.
* Lots and lots of former factory towns in the Midwest, including most cities around the Great Lakes (the "Rust Belt"). UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}}, UsefulNotes/{{Cleveland}}, UsefulNotes/{{Milwaukee}}, and UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}} are but a few cities whose populations today are half of what they were in the mid-20th century (if that). Even those that have bounced back economically, like Pittsburgh and Milwaukee, still struggle to shed their former image. It's easier to list the exceptions (cities that have never suffered) rather than those that fit:
** UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}}, despite losing a quarter of its population since its historic 1950 peak, has held up due to sheer size (third largest city in the USA) and a relatively diversified economy.
** UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}} from being the centre of Canadian finance and media (with a well-timed boost in TheSeventies from UsefulNotes/{{Quebec}}'s strict language laws, which led to an influx of anglophones and businesses from UsefulNotes/{{Montreal}}).
** Columbus, UsefulNotes/{{Ohio}}, since its economy is heavily tied to Ohio State University (the largest single college campus in the US) and the state government rather than any specific industry that would be at the mercy of economic trends.
** UsefulNotes/{{Indianapolis}} definitely fell under this category until the 1970's when it made the controversial decision to consolidate all of Marion County (with the exception of a few enclaves) with Indianapolis to form one large city. The result was the middle class who had fled the city to the fringes of the county in the post-war years were again part of the city and this led to more revenue and a revitalization of the downtown area which occurred decades before many other cities followed suit.
* Many fishing communities in Atlantic Canada were devastated with the collapse and shut down of the cod fishery. In the decades since, few have been able to come anywhere close to recovering as fish stocks continue to struggle.
* The Detroit area is an incredible example of suburbs that are completely independent of the city they surround.
* UsefulNotes/StLouis, Missouri used to be this before the city created a massive lower-city cleaning program where they cleaned up and cleared out the lower city.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnJsv46c8rw&t=22s&ytbChannel=Precision%20Productions Gary, Indiana]] is a few steps away from being a straight-up GhostTown--either that, or Indiana's own mini-Detroit. Either way, not exactly an ideal place.
* [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkState Upstate New York]], in addition to the usual Rust Belt problems, also had to deal with the loss of the Erie Canal as a viable shipping route after the St. Lawrence Seaway[[note]]The combined river/canal system connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean (the canals bypass dams and dangerous rapids in the St. Lawrence River), giving the Upper Midwest access to lucrative maritime trade.[[/note]] made it obsolete. UsefulNotes/{{Rochester}} was dealt a particularly massive blow around the TurnOfTheMillennium because its economy was heavily dependent on [[Creator/EastmanKodak Kodak]], which was lethally slow to adjust to the digital photography revolution. Thankfully, it [[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/nyregion/despite-long-slide-by-kodak-rochester-avoids-decay.html?_r=1 bounced back]] due to the tech industry and its thriving arts scene, and just in time, as Kodak filed for bankruptcy shortly after the renaissance. Albany, Ithaca, and to a lesser extent Syracuse also survived due to their universities and, in Albany's case, the state government. Unfortunately, many other upstate cities, like Schenectady, Troy, Binghamton, Rome, Utica, and Niagara Falls, were not so lucky. Even Buffalo, which managed to avoid total decrepitude, still has a lot of examples of post-industrial rot scattered throughout the city, its population having fallen by over half.
* New England sports several of these -- all former textile mill towns whose mills either moved or went bust in the mid-to-late 1900s. Some managed to bounce back (Manchester, Nashua, and Worcester being among the better examples), while others (Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, Lawrence, Lowell, Brockton, Lynn, Fitchburg, and Fall River, all in UsefulNotes/{{Massachusetts}}, and Pawtucket and Woonsocket, both in UsefulNotes/RhodeIsland) never recovered and are nowadays known for being places that one should avoid at all cost. Like the above-mentioned example of Detroit, however, the suburbs are doing very well in spite of the cities that they service; the Merrimack Valley region does very well despite being home to Lawrence, Lowell, and Haverhill (all of which are known for being highly decrepit and crime-ridden) because of its ties to Manchester and Boston, while the same is also true for Agawam, Longmeadow, and the other suburbs of Springfield and Hartford, both of which are among the poorest and most dangerous cities in the entire Northeast.
** Some areas of Berkshire County in MA can be described as a [[CompositeCharacter combination]] of the above problems of Upstate New York and former industrial New England. While able to transition from textile mills to steelworking, avoiding that same early 20th century decline, eventually the same faults that would come to plague the rest of the Rust Belt would hit the Berkshires as well. This is noticeable mostly in the northern half of the county and Pittsfield, where such industry was concentrated-- also because the southern half of the county benefits from the attention of New Yorkers with summer homes around Great Barrington. It isn't necessarily as severe as other examples, though. Despite North Adams having a population on the decline since the 60's, [[https://massmoca.org/ MASSMoCA and the general Berkshire art scene]] have prevented it from fully crumbling. It also doesn't hurt to have one of the wealthiest and most well-regarded [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_College colleges in the nation]] only a few minutes away. This, however, comes with the caveat of gentrification and a growing divide between new neighbors and pre-existing working class families. Other communitise like county capital Pittsfield aren't nearly as lucky, and many other parts of the already sparsely populated county have been hit rather hard by the Opioid Crisis. It's a weird situation.
** Although, Lowell isn't as bad off as a lot of them, due to Tourism brought in by [[https://www.nps.gov/lowe/index.htm Lowell National Historic Park]], which preserves the history of Manufacturing in Lowell and the rest of New England, and being the home of one of the state's major Universities, [[https://www.uml.edu UMass Lowell]]. It only starts to get rough as you head away from the highway and towards Lawrence.
* The Niagara Region in Ontario, much like upstate New York across the river, has been in slow decline since the 1970s. There used to be much manufacturing along the Niagara River and Welland Canal, but cheaper products from elsewhere have caused all but a couple of the factories to go bust. The tourist industry took a major hit in 2001 after 9/11, followed by the SARS outbreak, both of which discouraged the usual American tourists from crossing the border. The area now mostly runs on the casinos, wineries, and agriculture.
* Towns that base their existence on exploiting natural resources often become these when the resource runs out or becomes obsolete. Examples would be the ghost towns in the Western United States, mining towns in Appalachia, and more mining towns in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
* Some towns that are forcefully evacuated because their national resource makes them toxic.
** In the present day, Libby, UsefulNotes/{{Montana}} is fighting a valiant fight against falling victim to this, in spite of the massive zonolite/asbestos presence that was once in the town. The Superfund project spent about two decades working to clean up the town and now certain pockets of it are livable, though generations of its residents will still succumb to mesothelioma.
* Odessa, UsefulNotes/{{Texas}}' economy is directly tied to the dwindling reserves of oil in the area. Not good. Ditto for its ''Series/FridayNightLights'' stand-in, Dillon.
* Many of the suburbs in the American "Sun Belt" (the southern third of the country, running from Southern UsefulNotes/{{California}} to [[UsefulNotes/NorthCarolina the]] [[UsefulNotes/SouthCarolina Carolinas]] and UsefulNotes/{{Florida}}) went from {{Boom Town}}s to Dying Towns virtually overnight as a result of the 2008 economic collapse. For decades, Americans had been choosing to buy houses somewhere that would be nice, warm, cheap, and sunny to live. Unfortunately, this led to a housing bubble in places that didn't actually have anything else supporting their economic base. Cities like Phoenix, UsefulNotes/{{Arizona}} and Fort Myers, Florida, which were largely nothing ''but'' suburbs, have been hit especially hard. UsefulNotes/LasVegas survived due to its massive casino-based tourist industry, but it is now surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of pre-built tract houses in the middle of the desert that will probably never sell.
* In California, entire ''counties'' have been brought low -- ”Riverside and San Bernardino counties, for example, were marketed as bedroom communities. They were once touted as ''the'' affordable alternative to expensive housing in UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, Orange County, and San Diego. The combination of rising gasoline prices (California's strict emissions standards meant the state already had the highest gas prices in the country, even before prices spiked in the mid-2000s), falling housing prices, and the lack of high-paying local employment created a perfect storm for the region, which now suffers from some of the highest crime and unemployment rates in the nation.
* One California example, [[https://grist.org/article/the-true-story-of-the-town-behind-erin-brockovich/ Hinkley]], stands out as the location of the tainted water scandal chronicled in ''Film/ErinBrockovich''. After the events of the movie, Pacific Gas & Electric offered buyouts to the residents on the plume. Many chose to cut their losses, to the point that PG&E now owns about two-thirds of the property in the town. The effect on the local economy is unmistakable.
* In UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}}, during the Boeing Bust of TheSeventies, there was a billboard near the airport that read [[https://gilmanpark.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/lights-out-in-seattle/ "Will the last person leaving Seattle - turn out the lights"]]. It was out of this milieu that {{grunge}} emerged. [[Creator/XboxGameStudios The city turned itself]] [[Creator/{{Nintendo}} around pretty quickly]], however (Starbucks, Seattle's pride and joy, made coffee a luxury simply by tripling the price), the transition largely completed in TheNineties.
* Harvey, Illinois, a southern suburb of Chicago. Home of the [[http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/dixie_square_mall.html Dixie Square Mall]] (aka the mall from ''Film/TheBluesBrothers''), abandoned since 1978. The last portion of Dixie Square Mall was torn down in May 2012. Whether the redevelopment that the city is hoping for actually happens remains to be seen.
* Sidney, Nebraska. Once a growing city that boasted the headquarters of Cabela's. Once Cabela's was bought out by Bass Pro, a town of 7,000 people lost 2,000 jobs. You do the math.
* [[UsefulNotes/OtherCitiesInTexas San Antonio, Texas]] was a dying town for most of the first half of the 20th century. Then it was announced the 1968 World's Fair was going to be held there, leading to a surge in development. The Riverwalk came into being, new downtown hotels were built, a convention center sprung up, downtown was transformed from a sleepy hub of shantytowns to a lively center of activity, etc.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schefferville Schefferville, Quebec]], whose economy was based on iron ore mining. When the mine stopped in 1982, the population dropped from over 5000 to just a few hundred today. The city temporarily lost its legal incorporation status between 1986 and 1990.
* Many smaller towns in the Pittsburgh area have been severely crippled by the loss of the steel industry in the 1970s, many of which are along the Ohio and Beaver Rivers. Some of these include towns such as Aliquippa, Ambridge, Beaver Falls, New Brighton, Midland, Monaca (though perhaps not as much), and Freedom- and that's just on the western side of the city. Notable exceptions upon the river include Beaver (the seat of Beaver County), Sewickley (lot of old money here), and Moon (the airport). Since 2000, Aliquippa experienced a 20.5% drop in population, and Ambridge lost 10.1%. However, the area may see some revitalization with a Royal Dutch Shell cracker plant showing up in nearby Shippingport in the next year or two.
** A classic example is Sharon, UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}}, which was made up almost entirely of manufacturing facilities, including Sharon Steel, est. 1890, and was located very close to Interstate 80. After the Sharpsville Dam was built in the 1950s to control flooding, thus cutting off trade by way of the rivers, Sharon relied on their connection to I-80 to transport goods as well as rail lines that ran by select factories. Steel manufacturing declined due to overseas competition, and manufacturing in general declined until the recent economic recession practically crippled the town. Sharon Steel was closed in 1992, and nearly all physical remnants were removed by 1995.
* The vacation destination Salton City, California, suffered greatly when the Salton Sea's slow evaporation and increasing salinity killed its ecosystem and destroyed its tourism industry. The city is full of half-completed houses, abandoned buildings, vacant lots, and roads to nowhere. However, the dirt-cheap land eventually created a housing boom in the area in reaction to California's skyrocketing real estate prices. Its 2010 population was triple that of 10 years previous.
* ''WesternAnimation/Cars1'' is actually TruthInTelevision to a point. Many towns that had historically banked on the steady traffic from Route 66 became this or even died completely, largely due to the emergence of the interstate highway system combined with other socioeconomic factors. Stories like Radiator Springs were and still are tragically common. One example of this was Winslow, Arizona, which faced a population and economic decline after being bypassed by Interstate 40, forcing local businesses to close; the city only rebounded after marketing itself on tourism due to its history with Route 66 and building a park inspired by the song "Take It Easy" by the Music/{{Eagles}} (which has the line "Well, I was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona" in the lyrics).
* A non-industrial example is Kalaupapa, Hawaii, which was founded in 1866 as a leper colony. By 1969, Hansen's disease--aka leprosy--was treatable and better understood, so the state ended its forced exile and moved to close the colony. However, many former patients [[IChooseToStay wished to stay]] since they knew their disfigurements would make it virtually impossible to reintegrate with society. As a result, the state closed Kalaupapa to new arrivals but has allowed the former patients to live there for the rest of their lives. As of the 2010 census, less than a dozen of the original patients remain (the rest of the town's 88 residents are state and national park employees). When the last of the now-elderly patients moves or passes away, the state plans on turning the colony into a memorial park.
* Geographers and Sociologists have studied many American and Canadian towns which have died or shrunk considerably over the past several decades and determined that one by one the following will happen, usually in this order: A major employer closes, major retailers close, the town government dissolves or consolidates with the county, the school closes, the Post Office closes.

!!Other
* Many smaller towns on the west coast of [[UsefulNotes/{{Malaysia}} Peninsular Malaysia]] were originally founded as {{Boomtown}}s for rubber plantations and tin mines during the late 19th and early 20th century; this dependence on single sources of income became their undoing when the price of rubber and, ultimately, tin finally crashed for good, decimating their bread and butter and leading many of its younger talents flocking for greener pastures in larger towns or cities or abroad. The vast majority who chose to stay and contribute to whatever was left of the town's economy are now 50-somethings or older, which is very telling of the future of these towns.
** State capitals do not fare better either. The Kuala Lumpur-centric nature of the country's economy after independence naturally sent new job seekers gravitating to the national capital and its surrounding satellite towns, or alternately the state capitals of Penang and Johor or UsefulNotes/{{Singapore}}. The scarcity of free land for new development within old town centres would also prompt developers to construct new suburban towns on the outskirts, taking with it long-time townies who simply favour more peace and quiet. It's thus unsurprising to find capitals for lesser-known states suffering from acute urban decay and desolation, even during festive seasons, when people are supposed to be returning to their hometowns.
* This is an enormous problem in Russia, where there are dozens, if not ''hundreds'', of so-called "single-factory towns". Many of them were built during the mass industrialization in the 1930s and had almost the entire adult population working on some sort of heavy machinery factory or power plant. When the USSR bit the dust, many of the factories were shut down or forcibly bankrupted, leaving entire cities unemployed and rapidly depopulating.
** A typical example is Yurievets, Ivanovo Oblast. Once home to several factories, currently all are in ruins or disassembled. The population is half of what it once was and below the official minimum to qualify as a town, and survives on subsistence farming and working shifts in neighboring cities. You can often find abandoned houses if you wander in the streets.
* Former East Germany is infamous for this. Since German reunification, there has been a constant exodus of people from rural areas, small towns, and fairly large cities to move towards the area that was former West Germany. These emigrants are also disproportionately young and women. High rates of unemployment and crime, low salaries, and rising amounts of neo-Nazi activity are all common reasons why people emigrate. It also doesn't help that most of the national economic activity, and large demand for skilled workers, is concentrated along the western parts of the country. What became East Germany wasn't exactly known for being a thriving economic center compared to its western and southern counterparts even before the split. While the trend has reversed recently in the larger and more prosperous areas of the East (Leipzig, Dresden, etc.) or tourist trap towns (Erfurt, Weimar, Potsdam, Stralsund, etc.), the future remains unclear whether the states there would be able to recover demographically.
** The aforementioned tourism, thanks to the East controlling an impressive half of Germany's world heritage cities, has given some hope in making these smaller cities prosperous once more while everything else is going to rely on immigrants (which may be hard to do given the East's homogeneity) and making young people stay (which may start working given how cheap the east is compared to the increasingly expensive west and south). Leipzig, former East Berlin and Dresden have begun competing for young people with former West Berlin and Munich in this regard by styling themselves as hip, cheap and great for artsy youth or history lovers.
** A very special case is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursdorf Kursdorf]], a village ''in the middle of a major airport''. As in, between the two landing strips. Understandably, people are leaving and nobody is moving there.
* This was and to a great extent still is a problem in Britain, which ran its industrial base ragged during the Second World War and was forced to nationalize many heavy industries to prevent their total collapse. Then TheEighties happened and things got worse. As mentioned above, if you ever visit one of these towns, [[BerserkButton do NOT mention]] UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher.
** Britain is pretty much what happens when an entire country becomes a dying town. The wealth generated by the old empire is long gone and economic activity is centered mostly in London, with even that starting to run out and die off post-Brexit. Those who could afford to leave for the EU and the economic opportunities there, have all done so.
* Many coastal towns in Britain began as isolated villages and hamlets until the boom in seaside holidays which started in the middle-late 1800s when the tourist demand caused them to expand into seasonal "must-visit" places based on hotels, boarding houses, and the associated infrastructure. Blackpool, for instance, became a "cheap-and-cheerful" location for nearby industrial cities to send their people on cheap holidays throughout the summer months. This supply-and-demand relationship persisted well into TheFifties and TheSixties, until rising affluence and the relative ease of overseas travel opened up cheap, attractive, holidays in sunnier hotspots such as Spain. Suddenly, Rhyl or Skegness or Southend did not seem so attractive for a summer holiday. Go to Rhyl in North Wales now and you find a derelict, crumbling, town with most of its grand seafront boarding houses crumbling or turned into homeless hostels, and tired, dated, seedy, attractions which are relics of its former glory.
* Many capitals when they cease to be one. Especially when they were built from scratch for no other purpose but to serve as a national capital, often (and rapidly) going all the way to GhostTown -- e.g. Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire.
* Right in the middle of TheSeventies, for purely political reasons, [[UsefulNotes/{{Poland}} Polish]] [[CommieLand People's Republic]], completely changed its administrative division, going from 17 to ''49'' voivodeships.[[note]](basic unit of administrative division, think provinces or states)[[/note]] Suddenly a lot of provincial towns and small cities were elevated to the position of region's capital and gained central investments, mostly into pompous infrastructure. After the fall of communism merely 14 years later, two-step reform was initiated and in 1999, the country was reorganised back into 16 voivodeships. As for the remaining 33 former capitals, most suffered massive population outflow, dwindling their already small population, while the former seats of administration are at best rented out for office spaces - in most cases, they are just boarded up.
* There are lots of mining towns in the middle of the Australian bush that previously had populations of thousands or even tens of thousands when the mine was especially large. Now, many are [[GhostTown completely empty]], or have just a few hundred people and a filling station. There are also some towns that had their populations dwindle to almost nothing after trains stopped coming that way.
* Many towns around the Aral Sea, like [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moynaq Mo'ynoq]], had populations of thousands employed in the fishing industry. Now, due to the Aral Sea shrinking, many of these towns are located miles from the nearest shore; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aralship2.jpg fishing boats]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AralShip.jpg ships]] lie scattered on the dry land that was once covered by water. Ongoing desertification and unemployment led to depopulation and a decline in living conditions of these who decided to remain.
** Much of Central Asia suffered this fate centuries ago after the trade routes known as the Silk Road were bypassed by the circum-African seaborne links between Europe and South[=/=]East Asia. The overall effect was akin to the fate of towns bypassed by upgraded highways writ large.
* Many rural communities in Japan that have no tourism to thrive on suffered from heavy population loss. This is mostly caused by the combination of closing of industries, young adults migrating to major cities for career, education, and cultural opportunities, and low birth rates leaving mostly the elder population.
* There are some towns, such as Haapamäki, in Finland, which were built near some railway route and most people there used to work for VR (the national railway company). Then VR centered things to bigger cities.
* In UsefulNotes/{{Armenia}}, there are a lot of these outside of the capital Yerevan. Towns devastated by the 1988 earthquake in the north have it the worst, although most of the buildings have been rebuilt. Other towns that were big tourist spots in Soviet times like Dilijan have seen business dry up since independence from the Soviet Union. And villages along the border with Azerbaijan have shrunk due to the dangers posed by ceasefire violations in the ongoing conflict over [[UsefulNotes/RepublicOfArtsakh Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh]]. People from small villages across the country are leaving in large numbers to the cities, or worse, to Russia or the US.
* This is a major problem in some regions[[note]]Teruel, Soria and Asturias to cite some[[/note]] of UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} as villages and towns are depopulated by young people who move to the cities looking for employment and a better life, leaving mostly elderly people behind.
[[/folder]]

** By the time of ''Higurashi: When They Cry Rei'', Hinamizawa is even ''worse''. The population's dwindled heavily since the 80s, and the town's aversion to outsiders had only made it worse. he Kimiyoshi family had been experimenting with ways to get the town back on its feat, but in response got 500 members of the Polaris community as new citizens instead. It still causes a lot of friction between the new and old residents.

The local pastime, for many people, is some type of [[DrugsAreBad drug]] (meth, heroin, crack, whatever the "flavor of the decade" happens to be). There may also be children running amok in the yard while the adults pay them no mind. If you ask, the inhabitants will tell you NothingExcitingEverHappensHere. At least not since the rutabaga factory burnt down, or the hot springs dried up, or the Widget Factory sent all its jobs to {{Ruritania}}, or Bigville got the freeway exit.

The economy, meanwhile, probably hinges on monthly benefits payments, and the local Wal-Mart is likely the de facto town meeting place. The few jobs that do still exist are either part-time and pay minimum wage with little or no benefits, or full-time unskilled labor positions that pay poorly, and have limited opportunities for advancement that are largely contingent on who you are due to rampant nepotism and cronyism; unless you belong to or are associated with one of a select few dynastic local families, you simply do not have a shot at rising through the ranks. If there is a decent-paying job available that doesn't require higher education or specialized training, it's probably dangerous, unpleasant (usually mining, waste disposal, or meatpacking), and likely to necessitate an early retirement due to the physical toll that it takes.

** UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}} from being the centre of Canadian finance and media (with a well-timed boost in TheSeventies from Quebec's strict language laws, which led to an influx of anglophones and businesses from UsefulNotes/{{Montreal}}).

** UsefulNotes/{{Indianapolis}} definitely fell under this category until the 1970's when it made the controversial decision to consolidate all of Marion County (with the exception of a few enclaves) into one large city. The result was the middle class who had fled the city to the fringes of the county in the post-war years were again part of the city and this led to more revenue and a revitalization of the downtown area which occurred decades before many other cities followed suit.

* [[UsefulNotes/NewEngland New England]] sports several of these -- all former textile mill towns whose mills either moved or went bust in the mid-to-late 1900s. Some managed to bounce back (Manchester, Nashua, and Worcester being among the better examples), while others (Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, Lawrence, Lowell, Brockton, Lynn, Fitchburg, and Fall River, all in MA, and Pawtucket and Woonsocket, both in RI) never recovered and are nowadays known for being places that one should avoid at all cost. Like the above-mentioned example of Detroit, however, the suburbs are doing very well in spite of the cities that they service; the Merrimack Valley region does very well despite being home to Lawrence, Lowell, and Haverhill (all of which are known for being highly decrepit and crime-ridden) because of its ties to Manchester and Boston, while the same is also true for Agawam, Longmeadow, and the other suburbs of Springfield and Hartford, both of which are among the poorest and most dangerous cities in the entire Northeast.

** In the present day, Libby, Montana is fighting a valiant fight against falling victim to this, in spite of the massive zonolite/asbestos presence that was once in the town. The Superfund project spent about two decades working to clean up the town and now certain pockets of it are livable, though generations of its residents will still succumb to mesothelioma.
* Odessa, Texas' economy is directly tied to the dwindling reserves of oil in the area. Not good. Ditto for its ''Series/FridayNightLights'' stand-in, Dillon.
* Many of the suburbs in the American "Sun Belt" (the southern third of the country, running from Southern California to the Carolinas and Florida) went from {{Boom Town}}s to Dying Towns virtually overnight as a result of the 2008 economic collapse. For decades, Americans had been choosing to buy houses somewhere that would be nice, warm, cheap, and sunny to live. Unfortunately, this led to a housing bubble in places that didn't actually have anything else supporting their economic base. Cities like Phoenix, Arizona and Fort Myers, Florida, which were largely nothing ''but'' suburbs, have been hit especially hard. Las Vegas survived due to its massive casino-based tourist industry, but it is now surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of pre-built tract houses in the middle of the desert that will probably never sell.
* In California, entire ''counties'' have been brought low -- ”Riverside and San Bernardino counties, for example, were marketed as bedroom communities. They were once touted as ''the'' affordable alternative to expensive housing in Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego. The combination of rising gasoline prices (California's strict emissions standards meant the state already had the highest gas prices in the country, even before prices spiked in the mid-2000s), falling housing prices, and the lack of high-paying local employment created a perfect storm for the region, which now suffers from some of the highest crime and unemployment rates in the nation.

* Harvey, Illinois. Home of the [[http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/dixie_square_mall.html Dixie Square Mall]] (aka the mall from ''Film/TheBluesBrothers''), abandoned since 1978. The last portion of Dixie Square Mall was torn down in May 2012. Whether the redevelopment that the city is hoping for actually happens remains to be seen.

** A classic example is Sharon, PA, which was made up almost entirely of manufacturing facilities, including Sharon Steel, est. 1890, and was located very close to Interstate 80. After the Sharpsville Dam was built in the 1950s to control flooding, thus cutting off trade by way of the rivers, Sharon relied on their connection to I-80 to transport goods as well as rail lines that ran by select factories. Steel manufacturing declined due to overseas competition, and manufacturing in general declined until the recent economic recession practically crippled the town. Sharon Steel was closed in 1992, and nearly all physical remnants were removed by 1995.

* ''WesternAnimation/Cars1'' is actually TruthInTelevision to a point. Many towns that had historically banked on the steady traffic from Route 66 became this or even died completely, largely due to the emergence of the interstate highway system combined with other socioeconomic factors. Stories like Radiator Springs were and still are tragically common.
* A non-industrial example is Kalaupapa, Hawaii, which was founded in 1866 as a leper colony. By 1969, Hansen's disease--aka leprosy--was treatable and better understood, so the state ended its forced exile and moved to close the colony. However, many former patients [[IChooseToStay wished to stay]] since they knew their disfigurements would make returning to normal society all but impossible. As a result, the state closed Kalaupapa to new arrivals but has allowed the former patients to live there for the rest of their lives. As of the 2010 census, less than a dozen of the original patients remain (the rest of the town's 88 residents are state and national park employees). When the last of the now-elderly patients moves or passes away, the state plans on turning the colony into a memorial park.

Easily spotted by the number of businesses that are shuttered or boarded up, particularly on its main thoroughfare. The streets are nearly empty of vehicles, and the few businesses still remaining are dollar stores, liquor stores, a pawnshop, a check-cashing/car title loan business, or fast-food places selling PovertyFood. The grass hasn't been cut around quite a few houses, which often have a barking dog tied to a cinderblock, and inoperable vehicles and/or appliances lie rusting on the lawn, along with litter. Some lawns have ornaments that are considered "tacky," or holiday decorations unironically left in place even though it's August, and [[LowerClassLout inhabitants]] who spend their days sitting out front in cheap plastic lawn chairs with a cigarette perpetually clutched between two outstretched fingers and a cheap beer in the other hand.

Easily spotted by the number of businesses that are shuttered or boarded up, particularly on its main thoroughfare. The streets are nearly empty of vehicles, and the few businesses still remaining are liquor stores, a pawnshop, a check-cashing/car title loan business, or fast-food places selling PovertyFood. The grass hasn't been cut around quite a few houses, which often have a barking dog tied to a cinderblock, and inoperable vehicles and/or appliances lie rusting on the lawn, along with litter. Some lawns have ornaments that are considered "tacky," or holiday decorations unironically left in place even though it's August, and [[LowerClassLout inhabitants]] who spend their days sitting out front in cheap plastic lawn chairs with a cigarette perpetually clutched between two outstretched fingers and a cheap beer in the other hand.

The economy, meanwhile, probably hinges on monthly benefits payments, and the local Wal-Mart is likely the de facto town meeting place. The few jobs that do still exist are either part-time and pay minimum wage with little or no benefits, or full-time unskilled labor positions that pay poorly, and have limited opportunities for advancement that are largely contingent on who you are due to rampant nepotism and cronyism; unless they belong to or are associated with one of a select few dynastic local families, they simply do not have a shot at rising through the ranks. If there is a decent-paying job available that doesn't require higher education or specialized training, it's probably dangerous, unpleasant (usually mining, waste disposal, or meatpacking), and likely to necessitate an early retirement due to the physical toll that it takes.

[[quoteright:350:[[WesternAnimation/{{Cars}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/carstown.png]]]]

* Radiator Springs from ''WesternAnimation/{{Cars}}''. Once a waypoint along Route 66, it was bypassed when the interstate was built and siphoned away all their traffic and customers. The musical number "Our Town" depicts its decline from a thriving community. [[spoiler:Thanks to Lightning [=McQueen=], the town begins to thrive again.]]

* Music/RandyNewman has a few songs on this topic, ranging from sarcastic ("Burn On") to tragic ("Baltimore," the afore-mentioned "Our Town" from ''WesternAnimation/{{Cars}}'').

* ''{{WesternAnimation/Cars}}'' is actually TruthInTelevision to a point. Many towns that had historically banked on the steady traffic from Route 66 became this or even died completely, largely due to the emergence of the interstate highway system combined with other socioeconomic factors. Stories like Radiator Springs were and still are tragically common.