Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City

I found out about this book when The Atlantic published a set of pictures from Bradley Garrett's blog. Although I am not an urban explorer myself, I have always been very curious about this concept and the pictures looked fascinating enough for me to follow through and purchase Garrett's book.At a high level, the book describes the author's experience as an ethnographer doing research on the urban exploration (UE) community as well as being its very active participant. The narrative is a combination of Garrett's various adventures and deep reflections on the general philosophy of UE.From his adventures I found these the most interesting:1.Descriptions of social dynamics and politics of various UE groups that compete and cooperate with each other2.Exploration of the abandoned and disused London Tube stations3.Adventure in discovery and investigation of the London Mail Rail system4.Garrett's time spent with UE group in Minnesota, helping chart various underground tunnels underneath the Twin CitiesWhile Garrett's various UE adventures are certainly interesting in it of themselves, I think the key strength of the book lays in his healthy dose of reflection, introspection, and philosophizing that is intertwined into every exploit. Here, he deeply delves into numerous issues:1.UE ethics - what does it mean to leave no trace behind? how forceful to be when entering a place? how to approach abandoned and derelict places when they are used by the indigent and the homeless for shelter2.The ethos of UE - the difference between a controlled "museum like" interaction with history and present environment vs. a non-scripted, open ended, and non-linear approach of UE. The freedom to be able to take personal risks without being smothered by an overly safety conscious society. Being able to truly connect and build a relationship with one's city of residence through the exploration of all the spaces and environments that it has to offer.3.The problems of publicizing one's UE exploits - on the one hand wanting to share the fascinating pictures of the unknown and the forgotten places with the world, on the other hand drawing the attention of the authorities to the whole UE community and making it more difficult for other explorers to access these sites4.Describing the culture of UE to the lay audience without homogenizing a very diverse set of individuals, and becoming an unwanted spokesperson for the entire communitySince I am not an urban explorer, my sense prior to reading this book was that UE was akin to self directed, amateur archeology. Something that is driven by trying to reconstruct the past lives and interacting with the histories of the abandoned and derelict places in an unconstrained fashion. While that may be partially true for some urban explorers, this book really expanded this view for me. It showed, that for a lot of the people in the UE community, it's really about, as the title implies, the challenge of conquering the environment and solving puzzles in an urban setting. This could be figuring out how to gain entry into a specific place, charting a map of some underground tunnel/subway system, capturing all the elements of a particular system, or just simply beating out another group of people to some unexplored site. Given their drive to discover & chart, push boundaries, and seek novelty, it seems that modern day urban explorers are people in the same mold of Victorian era explorers such as Henry Stanley and David Livingstone.While I ultimately give it 5 stars, the book has a few gaps in my opinion. Since Garrett's life as an urban explorer served as the foundation of his PhD thesis in ethnography, I was surprised that he doesn't comment more about this dynamic. I understand that this book is largely about UE itself, but it would have been really interesting to learn more about what his academic colleagues and his advisors thought about the way he was conducting this research.While he does touch on this towards the end of the book, I would have also liked to see a little more commentary about blurring the line between one's own lifestyle and academic research. Given Garrett's affinity for UE lifestyle, it seems that this is something he would have been involved in regardless of his academic career. It just so happened that he was able to parlay his personal interest into furthering his academic career. Also, while the ambiguity between participant and observer in ethnography is a common occurrence, it seems that in Garrett's case, given his intense involvement into the UE cultural scene, he almost fully created his own experiences to document and explore. He is certainly very well aware of these issues and does touch on them in some way, but I just wish it was explored a little bit more.So, to summarize, this is a very thoughtful and involved look at urban exploration. In addition to some really interesting stories and anecdotes about specific adventures, I think the biggest value of this book is really in its reflective and engaging examination of the UE culture, ethos, and it's place in the modern society. I would certainly recommend this book to any curious reader.

Heard about this book after watching the author appear as a guest on the joe Rogan podcast.

I write as someone deeply interested in UE and in scholarship. I admire much of the work here and found it a compelling read. Perhaps in the future when I attempt my own Masters or PhD writing I will better understand the difficulty with generating a perfectly grammatical manuscript of such length. So I approach the several missing words and tautological situations without judgement. However, I'd be somewhat concerned if the inaccuracies here were indicative of the general accepted standard for PhD level research and a commercially edited and published book offered for sale. So in summary: this book is glorious and flawed, like it was assembled in the kind of heroic rush experienced between the third rail being disempowered and the arrival of the track maintenance people.

I've been a keen reader (or should I say viewer) of urban exploration books for many years. Most of them are just photo books and don't ever talk about why they are doing what they are doing. Garrett is the first to really do this is any detail. He is an urban explorer himself, but he is also a kind of philosopher. He tells us why we should care about abandoned building, construction sites and tunnels underneath the city. The adventures of the explorers getting into the places, along with plenty of close-calls, keep you on your toes when he gives you the philosophy. All in all, it's an amazing read and I finished it heartbroken it was over. I really hope there will be a Part II!

A sociology thesis, travel guide, and misfit ethos peppered with truly jaw-dropping photos. This book, while not for everyone, was compelling and affecting.

I saw the author on Joe Rogan's show. From what he said about his experiences I figure is was worth a look.

First, the good: man, those pictures. And this dude was *serious* about his research, and unless he’s just lying (which I don’t believe he is), showed amazing physical courage in some tight and dark places.But the text is self-absorbed to the point of solipsism.Add the generally collectivist world view and a strong stream of typical academic navel-gazing (climbing a rope into an empty tunnel does not “shockingly reconfigure the space”) makes this one incredibly dreary reading.

product arrived as expected. ordered as a gift

An interesting book. It is written in the style of an undergraduate paper (I know as I mark these), with much attempted explanations of the emotional and psychological motivations behind Urban Explorers. This made it quite hard reading at times. And dare I say, a little boring.Although not a 'coffee table' book it contains lots of high quality photographs but many (if not most) seem to be pictures taken from the top of tall buildings at night. I am sure each photo holds many memories for the author fighting to obtain the position so they may be taken, but for the reader, they are just skyline pictures. And other photos (such as some of the hidden London Underground) are not very good. A few however were outstanding and interesting.In summary, I mostly enjoyed this book, but I was not gripped as I imagined I would be. It is a book of two halfs: the first discussing in detail the history and motivations of UE, the latter giving more detail of the challenges of individual explorations.

Excellent book for urban explorers like myself. An adventure on every page. I found it very interesting indeed. Excellent photographs too. This is a must read.

Well worth reading, stayed with me for a while after finishing it, which is always a good sign. I did find it a bit sociological in places, but well worth reading nevertheless.

excellent

excellent product