The term urban exploration was coined by explorer Jeff “Ninjalicious” Chapman in his 2005 book “Access All Areas: a user’s guide to the art of urban exploration”. In it, he describes urban exploration, or “urbex” or “UE” for short, as:
“seeking out, visiting and documenting interesting human-made spaces, most typically abandoned buildings, construction sites, active buildings, stormwater drains, utility tunnels and transit tunnels… usually neglected by or off limits to the general public, and [does not] always involve trespassing”.
Jeff “Ninjalicious” Chapman, Access All Areas: a user’s guide to the art of urban exploration
Chapman gets to the heart of what urbex is, and the many different disciplines within it. But I think we can add to it.
When asked if there is a code of ethics that urban explorers follow, political geographer Dr. Anja Kanngieser cited not a code (which there technically isn’t), but instead their motivations, particularly:
“… a desire to freely engage with space, to enter places that are closed to the public, to cross fences and borders despite explicit instructions not to, to go down into subterranean features and into forbidden territories, is a desire for self-determination and a desire to live without an imposed authority. It’s a desire for radical forms of play and fun, for excitement.”
Dr. Anja Kanngieser, interview with Bradley Garrett, placehacking.co.uk
She definitely gets to the “why” for many explorers, which is often overlooked in terms of defining UE, but I think we can take this one step further.
Environmental anthropologist Veronica Davidov took a more contextual approach in her take on urbex. In the 2015 book, The Anthropology of Postindustrialism: Ethnographies of Disconnection, she wrote:
“An urban explorer or “urbexer” is someone who finds and goes into abandoned buildings. Urban exploration enables production of social identity and personhood inscribed into an alternative value system for an entire material infrastructure that has lost its use-value by the criteria of the mainstream society.”
Veronica Davidov, The Anthropology of Postindustrialism: Ethnographies of Disconnection
In other words, urban explorers give new life to places that have all but lost theirs. When a place is abandoned, it’s stripped of all context and meaning; a building is always constructed with a specific use in mind. Once it loses that purpose and the context in which is was created, we as a society don’t know what to do with it. In Davidov’s eyes, urban explorers ascribe to it a new reason to exist.
She takes into account the development of urban exploration as a subculture in the larger context of today’s society, specifically by looking at our locations through an economic lense. However, by limiting her definition to explorers of abandoned structures, she fails to fully grasp the breath of the diversity within the urbex community.
These definitions of urban exploration have been formed from three very different perspectives. But that’s good! I think it’s only from viewing it from all these angles can we get a more accurate depiction of urbex as a hobby, as a community, and as a cultural phenomenon. Therefore, moving forward, I’ll be using the following definition as the basis of everything else we talk about on this channel:
Urban exploration is the research, exploration and documentation of man-made structures that are off-limits, prohibited or restricted for legal, societal or cultural reasons. Its participants vary in ethics, methods and motivations, but all undertake certain shared legal and physical risks to achieve their goals.
However, we need to set something straight: this definition is set specifically for myself and this site. It was derived from a combination of prior research and personal experience. And while it stands that how I define urbex is an amalgamation of other explorers’ interpretations, and contains common phrases associated with it, the next explorer might have a completely different view on the subject.
And that’s okay. In fact, it needs to be this way.
Urban exploration does not have one shared history or lineage. Looking back on the story of its development and growth from a lesser-known activity taken on by a brave, curious few, into the burgeoning social media phenomenon it’s become in the last decade, there is no one singular path you can trace. The history of urban exploration is fractured, filled with both individuals and groups that have sprung up in support and development of it, working parallel toward a similar end, but not always together toward that end.
It gets even more fragmented when you realize that as urban exploration has developed all over the world, the societies and cultural norms within those societies help shape those who engage in it. Urban exploration at its core is all about going where you’re not supposed to go. But when the places “you’re not supposed to go” differ depending on where you’re from, one explorer is bound to interpret that very differently from another.
I hail from the United States; our abandonments are relatively young compared to the likes of European countries. Our society champions individualism over collectivism. The social media landscape promotes constant sharing and promotes those who are in need of constant validation. Combine these and the kind of urban explorer you often see nowadays is paranoid, attention seeking and ambitious to the point of excess. I’ve made note of both second-wave and third-wave explorers who exhibit these traits, but I’ve found them to be more common in the latest generation.
Those traits tend to belong to who the media has characterized as “urban explorers” in the last decade or so here in the United States. But that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the kinds of explorers you’ll find here, let alone the ones you’ll find abroad. If you look to Western Europe, compared to Eastern Europe, compared to Japan, compared to Australia… different regions, different cultures, different explorers. Same activity, very different ethoses.
If you want to explore solo, taking a vintage camera to capture the “beauty of decay”, fantastic. If you want to take a souvenir from a place that’s about to be demoed because no one else will appreciate the history being lost, I can’t judge. If you want to lead an expedition to map out the network of forgotten sewers that have run under your city long before you set foot on this earth, awesome. All are valid ways to interpret and express “urban exploration”.
Because, when you get right down to it, urban explorers do what they’re not supposed to do. Who are we to tell others how to live?