wasteland

plural wastelands

1. A place with no remaining resources; a desert.

   Ten years of drought had left the area a wasteland.

   1 more example

   2007, Kai Hansen, "To Mother Earth", Gamma Ray, Land of the Free II. Here create another wasteland / On and on 'til nothing's there / Here it comes, the devastation / Poisoning the air

2. Any barren or uninteresting place.

   After his experiences, he no longer found western Kansas such a wasteland.

   1 more example

   Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

   1961 May 9, Newton N. Minow, Television and the Public Interest

3. A devastated, uninhabitable area.

   How many nuclear missiles would have to be launched at the United States to turn it into a complete wasteland?

   2014, Randall Munroe, anonymous quotee, “Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #7”, in What If?, New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 157

   2 more examples

   Another place where, from the aesthetic point of view, a long tunnel would have been a real blessing, is East London as viewed from the carriage window on the old Great Eastern line. Despite a vast change from crowded slums to tracts of wasteland, due to its grim wartime experience, this approach still provides a shabby and unworthy introduction to the great capital.

   1951 October, R. S. McNaught, “Lines of Approach”, in Railway Magazine, page 703

   Yet had the whole train and all its bombs gone, had the engine crew merely jumped from the train and run as simple self-preservation would have suggested, or unhitched just the engine to make their escape faster, the whole town would have gone and most of the people with it, leaving just a smoking wasteland. Hundreds would have died.

   2022 January 12, Benedict le Vay, “The heroes of Soham...”, in RAIL, number 948, page 43

4. Unused land.

   Azaz and Ray were nominated individually for what, at first glance, looked like a project to transform wasteland at South Tottenham station into a community garden.

   2023 September 20, “National Rail Awards 2023”, in RAIL, page 82