I had initially thought about using Hashima Island as the main setting for the ally pitch.
It's an abandoned island shaped like a battleship,
formerly used to mine coal. I first stumbled upon Hashima island probably around two years ago via this article on Vice. Some people hop on over and sneak on to the (at the time off-limits) island. The images stayed with me and popped back into my head at the time the project was brought up.
I continued to look into abandoned places and stumbled upon a book on the Ruins of Detroit. Inspired, I began mashing up different architectural forms from both Detroit and Hashima. I stumbled upon some Hong Kong alleys as well and well, this was the result:
The general concept for this is as follows: This alleyway is one populated by the mole people of urban
legends: people who have taken shelter in underground, abandoned facilities and
created their own little society of sorts. The culture that developed has taken
to using the rail tracks provided in order to thrive in a different form of
entertainment: mine cart racing.
The whole mole people thing is pretty interesting since it's not set in any sort of post-apocalyptic world. They're just homeless people forced to move farther underground. Many of them have made tunnels, subways, etc. into their place of living before and during our current time period.
If given the chance, I'd like to give Jennifer Toth’s “The Mole People: Life in The Tunnels Beneath New York City” a try.
