Question - Will UE as a hobby simply become extinct if there are no old/abandoned buildings left and security becomes tighter?

[FrostysParadise]

I've recently had a UE resurgence in my life, striking gold at a time when I thought I had seen it all in my local area. Not necessarily newly abandoned buildings, but new to me. How I missed them before is completely baffling as I've been at this hobby for 18 years now, give or take. I explored one of these locations myself one evening, and returned a few weeks later with a friend, only to be confronted by large signs informing the reader that they were being recorded and all images would be handed over to the Police.

The discovery of these locations got me thinking. I asked this friend a question, and I wanted to extend that by asking the UE community itself this question, too.

Do you think UE as a hobby will ever become extinct or impossible to pursue if there simply aren't any old/abandoned buildings or locations left any more? As security measures become more accessible, easier to install and cheaper to run, and all of the old buildings are gradually demolished or saved from demolition and restored/protected etc, and more new builds come along, what will this mean for us? Will the hobby die, or do you think that the conditions that allow for a building to become abandoned in the first place are such an ingrained part of the human experience that there will always be abandoned buildings?

I suppose ultimately I've just had a moment of reflection, realising how fragile the hobby is and taking a moment to appreciate what I have, while I have it. I still mourn the loss of some real UE gems!

Would love to hear the thoughts of the community.

FP

 

[Midnight Odyssey]

I've recently had a UE resurgence in my life, striking gold at a time when I thought I had seen it all in my local area. Not necessarily newly abandoned buildings, but new to me. How I missed them before is completely baffling as I've been at this hobby for 18 years now, give or take. I explored one of these locations myself one evening, and returned a few weeks later with a friend, only to be confronted by large signs informing the reader that they were being recorded and all images would be handed over to the Police.

The discovery of these locations got me thinking. I asked this friend a question, and I wanted to extend that by asking the UE community itself this question, too.

Do you think UE as a hobby will ever become extinct or impossible to pursue if there simply aren't any old/abandoned buildings or locations left any more? As security measures become more accessible, easier to install and cheaper to run, and all of the old buildings are gradually demolished or saved from demolition and restored/protected etc, and more new builds come along, what will this mean for us? Will the hobby die, or do you think that the conditions that allow for a building to become abandoned in the first place are such an ingrained part of the human experience that there will always be abandoned buildings?

I suppose ultimately I've just had a moment of reflection, realising how fragile the hobby is and taking a moment to appreciate what I have, while I have it. I still mourn the loss of some real UE gems!

Would love to hear the thoughts of the community.

FP

Almost by definition, if there are no abandoned buildings left anymore then urbex becomes impossible as it's literally the exploration of abandoned buildings. However, that's obviously never going to happen because life is complex and so is the law / business. What if someone commissions the building of a block of flats but then funding gets pulled and work stops on the block of flats. Then a serious crime happens in the area, it becomes less desirable and businesses don't want to take ownership of the plot of land / the owner doesn't want to sell but can't afford to do anything to it? It will just sit there and rot. That's just one of millions of examples of why urbex will always be possible. How about economic downturns where someone in a country goes out of business and nobody wants to take the risk of going into business at such an uncertain time?

As to your second point, that's a much more realistic prospect. It's practically guaranteed that as technology improves and gets cheaper urbex will become more challenging (at least getting into / around the best spots). If it costs a company £1000 to hire an armadillo today, but costs £1500 for 2 armadillos in 10 years (inflation adjusted) then there's simply more tech to protect their sites.

 

[Speed]

I dont think it will ever die completely as theres always going to be a churn of buildings getting built and buildings closing down and being demolished. Theres no doubt the hobby has seen drastic decline in the last 10 years or so tho. Both the quality and quantity of places to explore has reduced dramatically. There's not really any fresh 'derelict' buildings of any significance coming along, if you look at what the masses 'explore' they have had to move on from proper exploring (like factories, hospitals, cold war bunkers etc) to exploring dross like empty 70s bungalows and farm yards with a few cars parked up. The kind of thing we used to laugh at people for posting is now the mainstay! Anything decent that closes will be explored long before it becomes derelict now usually. Real exploring has become more about exploring 'disused' sites or even sites before they close which is a somewhat different experience. The UK has lost its stock of potential UE sites just sitting there waiting to be found and not just that its lost its stock of known tourbus sites too. If you asked me to recommend somwhere for a noob to go have an easy but decent mooch now id be stumped! The days of there being 100s of vast abandoned locations just sitting there ready for people to visit has gone but the demand for that kind of tourbus location has rocketed with the advent of social media and UE being pushed into the faces of every bored housewife in the land.. The quality of places is waning simply because the march of progress deletes interesting dated buildings only to replace them with soulless modern boxes. If you look what people get excited about nowadays its just a bit depressing..

That said i dont think its going anywhere any time soon. Theres still many years of hunting down the odds and ends still left out there and there seems to be a new batch of explorers pop up every few years. Its just a much slower pace nowerdays. Biggest issue is likely to be changes in the law rather than changes in the availability of places to explore. We have already seen companies using injunctions to cause explorers serious hassle. I think it will only get worse under the current joke of a government.

 

[Scoobysrt]

No.
It may evolve to mean somthing else but curiosity will never die and there's always curiosity behind fences and boards.

 

[Wastelandr]

I do agree it's on the decline and there's noticeably less choice/quality than what I remember seeing coming up on here and DP when I started 13 years ago. It feels increasingly harder to be spontaneous/casual to see much of any quality. In Essex, there's very little about left, forcing me to have to travel further with locations being more limited. The days when people could do a daytrip to a new county and hit multiple decent derelict places with at least a few wins are also definitely fading. I also agree security measures are becoming tighter, I keep seeing places with 'overkill' fencing or sensors for somewhere that would've been left to rot a few years ago.

Having said that, urbex still has a big role to continue playing in documenting historic structures and infrastructure that will continue to close, so I don't think we should ever take the foot off the gas. There's still an awful lot more to be covered. I'll also say that some aspects of urbex should likely never change in our lifetimes - military structures and underground stuff. The good thing with those is they often are there to stay and don't change anywhere near as fast.

The bottom line is that urbex at heart is about seeing parts of the built environment that are off the beaten track. As long as you've got civilisation it'll always be possible, but it'll always be determined by the rise/decline of various aspects of our society and I suppose at the moment there's a lot of value in the UK's land and in the construction industry.

 

[FrostysParadise]

Almost by definition, if there are no abandoned buildings left anymore then urbex becomes impossible as it's literally the exploration of abandoned buildings. However, that's obviously never going to happen because life is complex and so is the law / business. What if someone commissions the building of a block of flats but then funding gets pulled and work stops on the block of flats. Then a serious crime happens in the area, it becomes less desirable and businesses don't want to take ownership of the plot of land / the owner doesn't want to sell but can't afford to do anything to it? It will just sit there and rot. That's just one of millions of examples of why urbex will always be possible. How about economic downturns where someone in a country goes out of business and nobody wants to take the risk of going into business at such an uncertain time?

As to your second point, that's a much more realistic prospect. It's practically guaranteed that as technology improves and gets cheaper urbex will become more challenging (at least getting into / around the best spots). If it costs a company £1000 to hire an armadillo today, but costs £1500 for 2 armadillos in 10 years (inflation adjusted) then there's simply more tech to protect their sites.

Some good points here. I adore this hobby and have recently written a memoir from a period of time I'd consider to be my "glory years of UE", just for a bit of fun. I suppose there will always be conditions that allow for abandoned buildings, I think I was just having a panic moment!

I've just noticed a serious increase in security measures over the last few years, or at the very least increased use of threatening signage, in a number of locations. Just as sure as explorers will always be curious about getting IN, these days there seems to be a more focused effort intent on keeping us OUT. Back in the day they would put up some feeble metal fencing and a few "Dangerous Building KEEP OUT" signs, and coming and going through the location as you pleased was a doddle. We're definitely in changed times.

 

[Speed]

The technology issue is interesting. I dont think its as clear cut as saying tech has made it harder. There's certainly alot more automated systems out there nowerdays but more often than not they have worse flaws than a guard in a hut had! It's far easier to bypass a badly placed darlik than a poor security guard.. for one security guards can get up and walk about!

Somtimes I think there's been a reduction in places left to fester but then I realise there's just been a reduction in places full stop. If people want to secure places they have more means at thier disposal but I'm not sure a building full of pics and cams is that much differnt to a building with a guard constantly patrolling round all day. Just a different approach needed!

 

[FrostysParadise]

I dont think it will ever die completely as theres always going to be a churn of buildings getting built and buildings closing down and being demolished. Theres no doubt the hobby has seen drastic decline in the last 10 years or so tho. Both the quality and quantity of places to explore has reduced dramatically. There's not really any fresh 'derelict' buildings of any significance coming along, if you look at what the masses 'explore' they have had to move on from proper exploring (like factories, hospitals, cold war bunkers etc) to exploring dross like empty 70s bungalows and farm yards with a few cars parked up. The kind of thing we used to laugh at people for posting is now the mainstay! Anything decent that closes will be explored long before it becomes derelict now usually. Real exploring has become more about exploring 'disused' sites or even sites before they close which is a somewhat different experience. The UK has lost its stock of potential UE sites just sitting there waiting to be found and not just that its lost its stock of known tourbus sites too. If you asked me to recommend somwhere for a noob to go have an easy but decent mooch now id be stumped! The days of there being 100s of vast abandoned locations just sitting there ready for people to visit has gone but the demand for that kind of tourbus location has rocketed with the advent of social media and UE being pushed into the faces of every bored housewife in the land.. The quality of places is waning simply because the march of progress deletes interesting dated buildings only to replace them with soulless modern boxes. If you look what people get excited about nowadays its just a bit depressing..

That said i dont think its going anywhere any time soon. Theres still many years of hunting down the odds and ends still left out there and there seems to be a new batch of explorers pop up every few years. Its just a much slower pace nowerdays. Biggest issue is likely to be changes in the law rather than changes in the availability of places to explore. We have already seen companies using injunctions to cause explorers serious hassle. I think it will only get worse under the current joke of a government.

Cheers for the input, some great points there. You hit the nail on the head re: the masses and I think that is part of the problem. With smartphones and social media completely changing how we think and how we interface with life and the world around us, most people now think "Hmm can I film this for social media/YouTube?" when in a given situation. No hobby or leisurely pursuit is sacred. Be it camping, UE, gaming, guitars, literally every known hobby has a million and one YouTube channels dedicated to it; Urbex has seen an insane rise in popularity amongst "YouTubers" and I believe with almost 100% certainty that this has caused the increase in security measures and the decline as a whole. People are simply chasing content at the end of the day, so there are no standards for size, quality and scale of a location. A shady wee farm house with a few old cars decaying out front will do, and is ideal "content" for these clout chasers. I'm trying not to sound like a gatekeeper, but it was once upon a time a secret community, where photos were shared online in dedicated spaces i.e. here or DP. Now, the cringey, click bait thumbnails and video titles culture has infected UE and it has cheapened it. Everything is sensationalised to get us to click it, with "shocked" faces in the thumbnails or overly dramatic video titles and all sorts of nonsense.

I agree there seems to be some kind of strange decline affecting Urbex everywhere. I had a theory concerning a possible reason for this, at least relevant to my area since it's a small rural community. I often joked with my Urbex pals, "the vandals have done us a solid here!" and silently thanked them for their continued efforts in assuring we have access to these buildings, by doing the 'breaking' for us. We'd much rather enter and leave the breaking to the vandals, as it's a much better deal for the conscience. I think there's a lack of vandalism these days because younger folk just don't have the same drive or curiosity they did in the past that would see them venture out in groups, exploring and wandering around town to alleviate their boredom. They have endless entertainment and social media at their disposal that keeps them hooked and keeps the boredom at bay now. Maybe they're just not that bored any more and going out in groups to wander around town simply isn't attractive. I've noticed it a lot in the past 10 years where I live. Nobody's fooling around or indulging general horseplay, and that, along with these increased security measures, ensure that potential UE goldmines remain out of bounds. There are at least 4 gems in my area but they are not derelict, just abandoned; somebody somewhere owns the building and there are cameras bolted to nearly every conceivable part of the outer walls, with every window firmly intact. It's painful to see.

 

[FrostysParadise]

I do agree it's on the decline and there's noticeably less choice/quality than what I remember seeing coming up on here and DP when I started 13 years ago. It feels increasingly harder to be spontaneous/casual to see much of any quality. In Essex, there's very little about left, forcing me to have to travel further with locations being more limited. The days when people could do a daytrip to a new county and hit multiple decent derelict places with at least a few wins are also definitely fading. I also agree security measures are becoming tighter, I keep seeing places with 'overkill' fencing or sensors for somewhere that would've been left to rot a few years ago.

Having said that, urbex still has a big role to continue playing in documenting historic structures and infrastructure that will continue to close, so I don't think we should ever take the foot off the gas. There's still an awful lot more to be covered. I'll also say that some aspects of urbex should likely never change in our lifetimes - military structures and underground stuff. The good thing with those is they often are there to stay and don't change anywhere near as fast.

The bottom line is that urbex at heart is about seeing parts of the built environment that are off the beaten track. As long as you've got civilisation it'll always be possible, but it'll always be determined by the rise/decline of various aspects of our society and I suppose at the moment there's a lot of value in the UK's land and in the construction industry.

Great points there, cheers for the input. I agree that at its core, Urbex is about going off the beaten track and finding beauty in decay, and this desire will likely never fade. It's just being made more difficult now to indulge the hobby, for a number of factors. You are spot on about the overkill with security, I have observed this myself in recent times, and you're absolutely right in saying that these places would have been left to rot before but are now suddenly being treated like a top secret military complex when really it's just a care home that has been forgotten and hasn't been demolished yet. It's infuriating. I was recently doing research for locations slightly further afield to go and visit, and finding metal sheets covering every window or entry point when you get there leaves you feeling extremely deflated and depressed. Perhaps there will always be abandoned buildings, but circumventing these security measures that are becoming more common is an entirely different matter.

 

[FrostysParadise]

The technology issue is interesting. I dont think its as clear cut as saying tech has made it harder. There's certainly alot more automated systems out there nowerdays but more often than not they have worse flaws than a guard in a hut had! It's far easier to bypass a badly placed darlik than a poor security guard.. for one security guards can get up and walk about!

Somtimes I think there's been a reduction in places left to fester but then I realise there's just been a reduction in places full stop. If people want to secure places they have more means at thier disposal but I'm not sure a building full of pics and cams is that much differnt to a building with a guard constantly patrolling round all day. Just a different approach needed!

I've even seen security vans, personnel and dogs of all things being implemented. It's complete overkill. I dare say growing older and having children plays a role in lowering one's hype or hunger for UE, or perhaps your inhibitions are raised as you age and you no longer have that lust for adventure, as is the case with a few former UE pals of mine, but the overall trend is negative from my perspective.

It's very disheartening scoping a location out online, getting hyped and making your way there, only to discover it's completely impossible to get inside. I'm just as passionate about getting exterior photos for my collection, but it doesn't hit the same. UE is not about being on the outside looking in, it's about getting in. Sigh lol.

 

[Speed]

I'm not sure thats a new thing tho really. If I think back to the days if the asylums some where secure and some were not. I guess if somone really wants to secure somwhere then there's more means at thier disposal nowerdays but there's still places getting left for dead. The issues really start when the masses clock in to them and bait them up as you say but tbh it's usually long after I've done with them

 

[Olkka]

I ponder this all the time. Short answer no, but the soul of it will decline (already has). The more salient of the points you raise is that, as Speed says, 'interesting' derelict places in a classical sense dry up, but RE a question of will future generations find structures built in 90s, 2000s, onwards etc exotic in the same way that we find structures of 50s and 60s vintage exotic - I think it's probably short sighted to say so. A post-industrial state will continue to churn over itself structurally, so there will always be something yes, just of applicable intrigue to those who have lived through a markedly different era. For now, especially those involved in the hobby in 2000s as well if not the 2010s, it's certainly famine rather than feast yeah.
Then RE the question increasingly secure premises, I don't think that will play as much of a part. If everywhere of interest to the wide umbrella of urban exploring is surrounded by three layers of electric fence and a hundred IR trip sensors, for example, I mean sure, the practice would wither, but there is no future economic scenario where anything close to this becomes a reality, so it's not really a question worth pondering. A landowner/landowning entity secures somewhere with his/its own capital based on how much he/it cares, and there just isn't enough money spread out around Britain to actually stop future generations (for whom disobedience is becoming far more normalised than it was for generations that preceded us) from poking about a steady supply of old warehouses or hospitals etc which will continue to find themselves in ruin for decades to come - K9 unit and rolls of razor wire or not.

 

[Westcountry Explorer]

I like to think UE will always exist in some form or another.

Going off on a slight tangent. I admit I'm one of those youtube nobbers. When I started my channel, one of the main reasons I did UE was 'for the content'. As times gone by, I've been exploring abandobed buildings more for the simple pleasure; nowadays I rarely record my explores. (Can't resist recording the underground stuff though lol.)

A thought that has gone through my mind is, if there was a drastic decrease in UE youtube vids would there be a correlating decrease in security at abandoned properties? I could be barking up completely the wrong tree here but I do sometimes think the whole youtube thing is part of the reason there's more security etc nowadays.

(I'll be the 1st to admit that if youtubers are partly to blame I've got to point that particular finger at myself.)

 

[Wastelandr]

I ponder this all the time. Short answer no, but the soul of it will decline (already has). The more salient of the points you raise is that, as Speed says, 'interesting' derelict places in a classical sense dry up, but RE a question of will future generations find structures built in 90s, 2000s, onwards etc exotic in the same way that we find structures of 50s and 60s vintage exotic - I think it's probably short sighted to say so. A post-industrial state will continue to churn over itself structurally, so there will always be something yes, just of applicable intrigue to those who have lived through a markedly different era. For now, especially those involved in the hobby in 2000s as well if not the 2010s, it's certainly famine rather than feast yeah.

Interesting point here Oli, I have wondered if the structures of the 90s/2000s will ever be viewed in the same way. I'm honestly tempted to say that apart from notably interesting exceptions, probably not. There is very little to really appreciate architecturally with most of today's utilitarian structures, so maybe the appeal will come from more just the sense of seeing 'behind the scenes'. Even the Brutalist buildings of the 60s/70s have a markedly more interesting vision behind their design than what we often get today.

 

[Olkka]

Interesting point here Oli, I have wondered if the structures of the 90s/2000s will ever be viewed in the same way. I'm honestly tempted to say that apart from notably interesting exceptions, probably not. There is very little to really appreciate architecturally with most of today's utilitarian structures, so maybe the appeal will come from more just the sense of seeing 'behind the scenes'. Even the Brutalist buildings of the 60s/70s have a markedly more interesting vision behind their design than what we often get today.

Yes, but folk in the 60s probably thought only Victorian/Regent/Georgian architecture was hot shit, and new Brutalist blocks were a disgrace, and now here we are fawning over coffee table books about Brutalist architecture as uber cool. So Occam's Razor, fast forward fifty years, some kind of similar cycle will probably have come around