Well, I don’t know about hotspots, per se, but this Salon slideshow of “the world’s most beautiful wastelands” makes a compelling argument for why travelers and adventurers might enjoy scrambling over eroded walls and darting across dusty plazas. These places all used to mean a lot to the people who lived in them, and now they’re crumbling into nothingness. They served different functions but now just take up space. They’re a visual reminder of our transience, a melancholy ode to human achievement and fragility. Like stumbling across Atlantis on land.

The splendor of days gone by in Detroit

Photo by Albert Duce, from http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/07/10/trazzler_slideshow_beautiful_wastelands/slideshow.html