Survived, but viable? Villages on the edge of the "big hole"

Locked windows, bricked-up doors, abandoned cemeteries, roads leading nowhere, only a few signs of human activity can be seen. Ghost villages emerging on the edges of Europe's largest lignite mining area in western Germany. These places fell victim to the voracious, gigantic excavators, as had many villages in the decades before. Except for a few, the residents have bowed to the supposedly inevitable in recent years and have resettled. They have moved to new houses in new villages of the same name. Only when the memories have faded it becomes likely that these new places, become homeland for the next generation. In 2022, the federal government decided to phase out brown coal mining, making dredging of old villages there no longer necessary. What future do those places hold? Will life come back? Will the former residents want to return? Will something completely new develop? Until then, they are "lost places."