Urban Exploration

All this focus on the front of houses and buildings reminds me of a module I studied at university called ‘The City’. Within this module, I was introduced to the concept of ‘urban exploration’. And the concept seems pretty relevant these days…

What is urban exploration?

Urban exploration is “a practice of researching, rediscovering and physically exploring temporary, obsolete and abandoned, derelict and infrastructural areas within built environments, without permission to do so” (Garrett, 2013).

While the fascination of such spaces has a long history, cohesive urban exploration groups have formed more recently, facilitated by the rise in internet use. These groups act in response or resistance to the “securitisation” of city space. This securitisation might manifest in increasing numbers of CCTV cameras, for example.

Here, it is important to note that space is not neutral. Rather, it is at the mercy of power arrangements. Tactics like urban exploration will always arise to meet the challenges of closed space.

What is the point of it?

Garrett suggests that urban explorers are interested in the other facets of the cities they live in every day - under-construction skyscrapers and transportation networks included. While such facets make up every day city life, we only see them from one angle or through one entrance – which ultimately gives a very narrow view. We don’t see the inner goings on or the behind-the-scenes parts.

Rather than an act of resistant, Garret claims that urban exploration is a “recreational practice working to take back from exclusionary private and government forces, to [re-democratise] spaces urban inhabitants have lost control over”. Alan Rapp (2010) supports this: “most urban explorers largely don’t make claims beyond exercising a right to learn more about their environment”.

So, urban explorers aren’t “calling for an organised revolution in the way space is controlled”. Instead, “they simply want to actively engage with their environment”, says Garrett.

Why does it matter?

While urban exploration appears to be “playful, comical, even pointless”, it opens our senses to what is so often taken for granted when we negotiate urban space. We don’t realise how much of the city is shut off from us and how many places are forbidden. We get used to a certain four walls (and doors) – the ones that are chosen for us in order to portray a certain idea, like a sense of order, quality or luxury. But this is just a fraction of the space.

And I guess, by drawing attention to what we see versus what we don’t see, what I’m trying to say is that not everything has to be perfect. The takeaway point is that even the most luxurious of places has a back entrance, with functional interior.