“[Urban exploration] is a community of people who by their inherent nature break rules and expectations. Expecting them to then follow the rules of a community is patently absurd” (Garret 2013: 33).
Pablo Arboleda, a Ph.D. student at Bauhaus-University Weimar, recently published an interesting article in the International Journal of Heritage Studies that argues for urban exploration as a type of bottom-up heritage activism.
In this post, I’ll discuss Arboleda’s argument and apply it to my own varied experiences as an urban explorer, anthropologist/archaeologist, and instructor of college courses about the politics of exploring and representing neglected spaces. I’ll also discuss recent visits I’ve made to the abandoned Detroit House of Correction (DeHoCo) and the role that urban exploration plays (or has the potential to play) in memorializing this soon-to-be-demolished site.
Continue reading “Are Urban Explorers Heritage Activists?: The ‘Eternal Drabness’ of DeHoCo”
