However, by limiting her definition to explorers of abandoned structures, she fails to fully grasp the breath of the diversity within the urbex community. 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. In Davidov’s eyes, urban explorers ascribe to it a new reason to exist. 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. When a place is abandoned, it’s stripped of all context and meaning a building is always constructed with a specific use in mind. In other words, urban explorers give new life to places that have all but lost theirs. 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 “An urban explorer or “urbexer” is someone who finds and goes into abandoned buildings. In the 2015 book, The Anthropology of Postindustrialism: Ethnographies of Disconnection, she wrote: 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.Įnvironmental anthropologist Veronica Davidov took a more contextual approach in her take on urbex. Anja Kanngieser, interview with Bradley Garrett, .uk It’s a desire for radical forms of play and fun, for excitement.” Dr. “… 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.
#Urban explorer definition code#
Anja Kanngieser cited not a code (which there technically isn’t), but instead their motivations, particularly: When asked if there is a code of ethics that urban explorers follow, political geographer Dr. Jeff “Ninjalicious” Chapman, Access All Areas: a user’s guide to the art of urban explorationĬhapman gets to the heart of what urbex is, and the many different disciplines within it. “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 always involve trespassing”. In it, he describes urban exploration, or “urbex” or “UE” for short, as:
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”.
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