What happens when a building, or town is abandoned?

[Tyrion101]

I've been trying to do research on the decay rate at which stuff starts looking like it's a hundred, and falling apart, but a brief attempt at a google search only gave me results for mostly articles about Olympic venues that have been abandoned. Which is nice but not exactly what I want. I suppose what I need are either some answers here, or a better question I can ask google. My brother and I are modeling a small neighborhood (in 3d) that should have the appearance of being abandoned, but I want it to look fairly realistic, in terms of wear and tear. I suppose it depends on the building, and the building materials, and the things inside, and environment. So, at what point would a neighborhood look like it had not survived a war, from simply just being left there?

 

[Bystander]

http://www.history.com/shows/life-after-people

 

[fresh_42]

You can look for pictures of Chernobyl or Fukushima. There is also an island somewhere near NYC where formerly has been a psychiatry, and a Japanese (?) island that hosted miners (?) and is now abandoned.

 

[Pepper Mint]

Ghost towns

 

[S.G. Janssens]

Two things came to my mind: The series Life After People and this video that I saw a while ago. I When I looked it up again, I came across a lot of other material. Of course, the answer depends very much on your time scale.

EDIT: Sorry, @Bystander, overlooked your link to Life After People.