This is what depopulation looks like: my home town stands as a warning to the West

When I was born in Guben on the German-Polish border in the 1980s, the town was a bustling, polluted hub of the East German chemical industry. Smog thickened the air, and extensive brown coal mining was turning the surrounding countryside into a barren moonscape. When I recently returned to Guben, I found a clean and beautifully restored town, but ...