I lived in Bangkok for a few months in 2004 and the city was still littered with half-finished high rise developments. They’d all been started in the mid-1990s and then the 1997 Asian financial crisis came along and wiped everyone out. They gave bits of the city a weirdly post-apocalyptic vibe (especially because I think one or two were being tentatively squatted).
Probably the dumbest failed high-rise development I’ve ever seen is the Hôtel Châteauneuf, an unfinished 18-story hotel in Oran, Algeria. The developer built this monstrosity on the grounds of the Palace of the Bey, one of Oran’s historic attractions … despite the fact that they didn’t have permission to do so. Eventually, someone in the government woke up and put a stop to the project, so now it’s just an empty concrete skeleton looming over the palace. Supposedly the local government has taken it over and is going to turn it into offices, but they’ve been talking about doing that for more than 12 years and it hasn’t happened yet.
See photo below. The views from the top are probably great, so I did think about climbing it. In the end I chickened out though, because the stairs didn’t look to be in great shape.
