We live in times of rapid urbanization. In fact, it's projected that by 2050, more than two-thirds of the world population will live in urban areas. With a whopping population of 7.9 billion, it seems like no place on Earth is left untouched by humans. But as that likely will be the prospect in the coming century, today at least, we still have some no man’s lands and abandoned places to visit.

“Abandoned spaces are eerily fascinating to us because they bring human culture and nature together in unexpected ways,” Lisa Yaszek, a Regents Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech, told Bored Panda. Lisa researches and teaches science fiction as a global language crossing centuries, continents, and cultures.

She explained further: “We tend to think of humans as active and nature as passive, and we assume that the monuments and cities we build by manipulating the material world and separating ourselves from nature will last forever.”

It turns out that our fascination with abandoned places may come from the fact that they “remind us that nature is also an active force that moves in strong, slow, and persistent rhythms that differ from but intersect with cycles of human time.”

“In short, these places remind us that humans exist in larger webs of being, and that we might not be the most powerful thing around. It’s both a humbling and exhilarating recognition—we are not alone here on Earth,” Lisa explained.

Moreover, according to the professor, abandoned objects and places are also appealing because they invite imaginative play. “When we see worlds collide like this, we can’t help but wonder: what happened? How did things get this way? Then we get to exercise our deductive and storytelling abilities as we piece together clues to answer our own questions. Sometimes we do this for the sheer fun of it all.”

Lisa continued: “and other times, images of discarded objects and decaying places can even get us thinking about how we can make imaginative but real change in the real world: what economic, political, and social arrangements caused this to happen? How can I work with other like-minded people to make sure that doesn’t happen in my own part of the world?”