A 32-acre site in Ann Arbor, this simulated small town was created to help test driverless cars and the vehicle technology of the future. With blocks of fake buildings and streets, it’s a Truman Show-esque suburban replica, as well as a bid to keep the center of automobile innovation squarely set within Michigan as opposed to Silicon Valley.

An in-the-works, 26-square-mile simulated small town, roughly the size of Bennington, Vermont, the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation (CITE) will spring forth from the New Mexico desert as a functional lab for product innovation. Pegasus Global Holdings plans to invest billions in creating the fake town, expecting demand for such a “living laboratory” to test security applications, drone technology and other concepts will justify the massive outlay in construction costs. Perhaps even more intriguing, CITE will have a real world antecedent. The planned layout is a model of the existing town of Rock Hill, South Carolina.

The FBI will tell you it’s the “baddest town in the country.” If you count the actors playing criminals, than perhaps it does deserve that reputation. Originally constructed in 1987, the faux town serves as a living classroom for future federal agents. Built by Hollywood set designers, Hogan’s Alley boasts everything from a barbershop and bank to a pool hall and restaurant (which actually serves as a classroom). A replica of Chicago's Biograph Theater, where agents famously gunned down John Dillinger, is down the road from the simulated town square.

Slightly stretching the idea of a town, this site nonetheless focuses on a very futuristic concept of community. The next best thing to the Red Planet appears to be the red soil of Utah. This “analog” of the Martian environment, a small campus run by the Mars Society, features a set of simulated habitats and a telescope. By running a series of test missions at this remote site (and a sister site in Canada near the Arctic circle), the organization hopes to learn lessons that will aid humanity when it eventually lands on Mars.

Built by the Army in the ‘50s to help test the effects of large-scale nuclear blasts on homes and other structures, this series of fake towns sprung up across the desert in Yucca Flats, positioned at varying distances from the blast site and populated with eerie mannequins. Constructed as part of Operation Teacup, these buildings withstood the blasts of 14 atomic bombs during 1955, The curious can take a tour of these sites, but need to register months in advance to gain clearance.

The official training center for the U.S. Secret Service, this 500-acre site provides a series of obstacles courses and faux buildings for training missions, including the forward fuselage of an airplane and a replica of Marine One. The campus also may by the future site of a proposed $8 million replica White House Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy requested from Congress earlier this year.