mining is perfectly sustainable provided the thing they're digging up is valued/prioritized high enough. thing about closed mines is they're never actually "picked clean", they're picked to the extent that labor & technology made it profitable at the time. in the USSR mining continued, and the miners got better working conditions & more vacation time. they also didn't have to worry about the price of bauxite falling a cent & having to close the mine.

but mining towns actually should have a sustained presence afterward because mine-holes leak and require remediation for decades, which is more manageable with some leftover infrastructure

Idk why you took my comment as a defense of the mining industry I was just pointing out why there are towns out in bumfuck mountainous areas.

But I would point out, 1) full communism is a ways off and until then we're probably gonna have to keep mining shit. It ain't like China doesn't haven't any mines.

And 2) there's still a lot of infrastructure in rural areas that requires some people live out there and those people generally want actual communities to live in not work camps, so I think this idea a lot of leftists have where we can clear out the entire country save for like 5 or 6 cyberpunk mega cities and make everything else a giant nature reserve isn't really as viable as most people think, least not in any near future