The Cold China Urban Decay Expansion Pack

AUGUST 12, 2007: This has been a long time coming: 77 of the most rapidly decaying scenes you'll ever see, direct from the land where urban decay is the rule rather than the exception. You can download it here, probably best to unzip it then view as slide show, especially if you're a decay seeker.

In case you didn't know, the buildings here are so bad that even the seediest South London council estate block transplanted into the middle of oil-rich Songyuan would look like a palace.

What i find most fascinating about urban decay is the way it shows what'll happen to the world's cities after the collapse of civilisation. China's buildings decay almost fast enough for falling chips of concrete cladding and tile to be a(nother) pedestrian hazard. And with a day to spare in the Songyuan spring, you could, if you wanted to, witness the weeds on a ten-storey roof emerge over the parapet and into public view. Someone wrote in New Scientist last year about "how quickly Earth will forget us". I'm surprised they didn't mention China's buildings. It's like watching a videotape of the post-apocalyptic world in fast-forward.

Some of these photos are ok, some of them are not really. Most of them are quite old. The reason for this is, unbelievable as this may seem to those who know me, China has so saturated my senses with urban decay that it actually now seems quite mundane.

I came to China thinking i'd be in urban decay heaven and for a time, i was. I even wrote a passionate description of a visit to a friend's house in a place that in the West would be a most terrifying ghetto. I somehow lost it and didn't have the motivation to re-write it.

Because you realise after a time here that this, although it captures the man-vs-nature battle i mentioned above, it's not really urban decay. For a start, most of the buildings in these pictures are less than 10 years old. And, more importantly, rich and successful people live in these kinds of places. In rich countries, urban decay's a massive, vivid, visual rendering of the society's imperfections. In China no-one gives a shit about how the buildings look when there's money to be made or a better life to be had.

Anyway, decay afficionados and future-watchers should enjoy this.