Telecommunications and tech firm Pegasus Global Holdings is building a full-scale model of an American town in the New Mexico desert 

They plan to open up the town, named CITE, to researchers experimenting in the fields of transport, construction, communications and security 

Since no one will live in the town, researchers can test their experiments without any threat to people 

The American west is littered with ghost towns - frontier villages that were abandoned with the end of the Gold Rush.

A town in New Mexico is about to join the ranks of these ghost towns, as the builders of the futuristic city have no intention of letting anyone live there. 

Telecommunications and tech firm Pegasus Global Holdings is planning to build a full-scale American town in the New Mexico desert, a place which they hope to open to researchers developing technologies for modern living. 

Pegasus plans to spend $1billion creating the 15-square-mile town, called CITE, with construction to begin sometime next year and opening as early as 2018.

CITE will include a town big enough for 35,000 people, with a business district downtown surrounded by terraced housing suburbs - but no one will ever live there. 

Instead, companies will have the opportunity to test such innovations as driverless vehicles and natural disaster-proof homes in a human-free, practically risk-free, environment.