I certainly don't wish to base all my entries on articles that have appeared in the Evening Standard but there was a fantastic piece on monday about urban exploration, or 'urbex' for short.
Urbex is the art of accessing or trespassing parts of the city that are 'off limits'. Very often this involves entering abandoned industrial sites such as factories, decaying prisons, hospitals or lunatic asylums and below ground sites such as catacombs, tunnels or 'ghost' tube stations (stations that are no longer in service). Urban explorers are often interested in photography and they attempt to capture the full beauty of decrepitude in their photos (the amazing photo above is of Essex County Lunatic Asylum at Warley and was taken by Simon Cornwell).
Urban exploring often involves trespassing but rarely breaking and entering. Urbexers don't believe in vandalising the buildings, they simply want to preserve the decay they find in the hidden histories of the city. However, it can be a dangerous hobby as many old buildings have rotting floors, asbestos and faulty electrics.
If you're interested, check out this website: http://www.simoncornwell.com/urbex/frames.htm
Or this forum:
For an academic analysis of fascination for urban ruins look at Tim Edensor's excellent book, 'Industrial Ruins'
I guess an interest in the hidden or secret history of the city is very much a result of people's growing boredom with the gentrified, ordered, pacified spaces of consumption that characterise so much of the modern metropolis. There is always the other city, no matter how hard we try to repress it.
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