My youngest sister once told me about a school trip she had taken to southern Spain. The group of teenagers had gotten off a train and found themselves standing in the central square of what could only be described as a ghost town.

Store fronts were closed, and the cobble streets were silent. The only movement in sight was a cat ascending a stone wall, who fearlessly held eye contact when approached.

The lone occupant of the town was an old woman, who - despite the pleas of her adult children - refused to abandon the village in which she had grown up for a more social life in the city.

When I was told this story, I was shocked. Surely my sister and her friends had by chance exited a train to find an anomaly of a town, where the cats outnumber the human inhabitants hundreds to one.

However, I recently read an article by The Guardian, that described the rising number of 'ghost villages' across Europe and Asia due to declining populations and urban migration.

Falling fertility rates in some of the world's wealthiest countries are leaving large areas of habitable land abandoned and unclaimed. In some middle-income countries such as Brazil and Thailand, this is also a problem. However, the global population is still expected to increase, peaking at 9.73 billion in 2064, before it drops to 8.79 billion by the year 2100.

Shockingly, the populations of countries including Spain, Italy and the Ukraine are expected to halve before the 2100. This is leading to an increased number of 'ghost homes', known as akiya in Japan, abandoned by the older population and without enough young people to fill them.

In the EU along, an area the size of Italy is expected to be abandoned by 2030. As abandoned farms and gardens become overgrown, a new kind of resident is moving in to enjoy the space and produce. Populations of large carnivores are on the rise in Europe, including wolves, lynx, wolverines and brown bears. Asia too has seen a notable rise in black bear populations.



In Spain, the numbers of roe deer and wild boar have skyrocketed, and they are being hunted by Iberian wolves, whose population has grown from 400 to 2000 in recent years.

Is this the future of Australian towns? Should we be encouraging economic and social growth in rural towns of focussing on dense urban living? Would you choose to stay in your hometown or follow your family to the city?