Pyramiden
During a visit to the Svalbard archipelago this summer I got the chance to visit the former mining town Pyramiden, which provides an interesting example of sustainability challenges to single industry towns. The settlement was found in the 1920s by Swedish miners and sold to the Soviet Union in 1927. Built to solely serve coal extraction, the settlement got evacuated in 1998 after the Russian government acknowledged this endeavor was no longer economically viable.