Urban Exploring
 

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Urban Exploring involves checking out seldom seen structures and places in urban environments. These places may include abandoned buildings, waterworks, tunnels, catacombs, or any other man-made places that the public does not often get to see.

It can be a dangerous pasttime, not only physically but also socially since the places targeted are usually not places you're supposed to be. But that just adds to the excitement of it all.

I'm not personally involved in this, thought I am fascinated by it and would like to see some of the places shown in the sites linked below. My only adventure along these lines was an evening spent exploring a maze of access tunnels below my old university. I remember at one point climbing a ladder and poking my head though a trap door only to discover it came out under a desk in some library office :D

These sites are filled with photos of places people have explored. I'm particularly interested in the old asylums and hospitals, they have such an aura of mystery surrounding them that I can't help but be curious. The fact that these guys are often very good photographers helps a lot too!

Urban Exploration Database
UK Urban Exploration Forums
urban exploring :: Home

Anybody here into this sort of thing? Any stories to share?

Seems like a really interesting pasttime, and something I'd quite like to do myself. The closest I've come to indulging in a bit of it myself was getting into this disused church (quite a big one too) with a mate just down the road from my flat, which was pretty cool (not quite the Temple Of Doom scenario in there as we'd speculated beforehand though, which was slightly disappointing).

Come to think of it, my parents used to live next to derelict pig farm. It was knocked down a few years ago, but it was great fun to explore and that. Not really urban exploring though eh.

A disused church would be pretty cool!

I really like the idea of urban exploring and I think it makes for some great photographs. There is another blog somewhere called 'Abandoned' or something and it's just artistic photographs of abandoned houses, warehouses, churches, everything. Stuff like that is really beautiful in a derelict way. I'll try to find the blog and post it.

The closest I've come to urban exploring was climbing up onto this little overhang weird thing which came off a level of a multi-level concrete carpark when I was about 16. It was this little ledge that you had to climb to to get to, but once you got there and sat on it the view was absolutely amazing. You could see the whole town and beyond. As a teenager I used to go there all the time. Wish I had pictures!

nah i think derelict pig farms definitely count :)

i think 'urban' here refers more to 'man made' than to 'city'.

I've done some stuff like this. I remember back in the town I come from, we were sneaking around in people's backyards basically because so much of the town is hidden away in various backyards - sometimes shared between several buildings - so we thought'd we'd increase our local knowledge and check'em out. We found a gazebo in one which was cool. Another favourite was this backyard with a set of stairs up on this small hill in center of town. When you got to the top, there was a perfect little overgrown garden up there that was obviously meant to be shared by several houses, but wasn't actually used by anyone.

Here on Svalbard, you have ghost towns, most notably Pyramiden which is a russian mining town which was left in 1996 I think. I've been there and had a look with some friends. The picture in your first post reminded me of a pool there, noise. ;)

I really really want to do this but I don't think Auckland is the best place for it... I imagine eastern Europe would be ideal. I'm still going to give it a try though and incidentally enough, I've recently been talking with my flatmate about doing it. Can't wait!

ghost towns sound perfect! where i grew up (Colorado) there were old homesteads here and there, but there was never much to see. a bit south of me was gold mine country, and there are LOTS of old mines there, but i never got the balls to explore them. too dangerous...

Seltzer, i imagine you can find stuff anywhere. looking through the big UK forum (2nd link in my top post) i was really surprised at the number of places people found to explore. i think you just have to know people who are into this sort of thing...

i was just showing my wife some of these photos and she got really excited, i guess it fascinates her too. honestly i think most people would be interested in this sort of thing!

there is a lot of abandoned stuff here in budapest, but it's mostly old soviet factories. plus there are a lot of gypsies and homeless that tend to take over these places, not terribly safe...

i just remembered exploring an old abandoned russian manor up in estonia a few years ago. found some soviet coins, a few old brass buttons with the hammer and sickle emblem on them, and a stash of old metal toy soldiers that were pretty cool...

haha now i have the urge to go sneaking around breaking into old buildings with a camera :D

I've been looking into this as well, and Toronto is such a great place to find abandoned buildings and whatnot due to it's age and history. I found a site with some fairly recent pictures of abandoned buildings and places around Toronto, if anyone's interested:

Toronto Abandoned Buildings | Silentbuildings.com - Part 2

I took these pictures, and a buddy of mine put them into a youtube video. I went there a few times when I was stationed in CT. I have a folder of thousands of pictures like this on my other comp.

Those are so creepy! I love places like that though, for that very reason. Wish there were some places like that to explore around where I live.