Explore everything : place-hacking the city

Title:

Author:

Garrett, Bradley L.

ISBN:

9781781681299

Publication Date:

2013

Physical Description:

xiv, 273 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), color map ; 25 cm

Language:

English

Subject Term:

Urban geography.

Contents:

The UE scene -- The ruins of history -- Capturing transition -- The rise of an infiltration crew -- Grails of the underground -- Hacking the New World -- Crowds and cuffs.

Summary:

"What does it feel like to find the city's edges, to explore its hidden tunnels and scale its skyscrapers? In Explore Everything, Bradley L Garrett tells the story of his adventures with the London Consolidation Crew, an infamous urban exploration collective, as they cross boundaries, uncover ruins and experience the city in new ways that shatter conventions of everyday life. In a series of narratives, including stories of how the LCC found the lost underground stations of London, discovered abandoned bunkers and ruins in Eastern Europe and scaled the tallest buildings in London, Paris, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit and Las Vegas, Garrett explores the various motivations for illicit trespass and what it might mean. The book is a passionate manifesto for rights to the city as well as new ways of belonging in and understanding the metropolis"--

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Library	Material Type	Call Number	Status
Searching... Acton-Agua Dulce Library	Book	910.4 GARRETT	Searching... Unknown
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Summary

It is assumed that every inch of the world has been explored and charted; that there is nowhere new to go. But perhaps it is the everyday places around us--the cities we live in--that need to be rediscovered. What does it feel like to find the city's edge, to explore its forgotten tunnels and scale unfinished skyscrapers high above the metropolis? Explore Everything reclaims the city, recasting it as a place for endless adventure.

Plotting expeditions from London, Paris, Berlin, Detroit, Chicago, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, Bradley L. Garrett has evaded urban security in order to experience the city in ways beyond the boundaries of conventional life. He calls it 'place hacking': the recoding of closed, secret, hidden and forgotten urban space to make them realms of opportunity.

Explore Everything is an account of the author's escapades with the London Consolidation Crew, an urban exploration collective.

The book is also a manifesto, combining philosophy, politics and adventure, on our rights to the city and how to understand the twenty-first century metropolis.

Reviews: (2)

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Dr. Garrett? asked the British police officer who boarded the plane as soon as it landed at Heathrow. The American-expat Oxford researcher was about to be arrested for his trespassing exploits. He meant no harm. Quite the opposite. Garrett and his fellow urban explorers celebrate forgotten places and protest limits on access. In this unique and electrifying travelogue, Garrett, a scholar with a background in anthropology and archeology, thoughtfully explicates their dangerous, exhilarating, and illegal explorations. We picture hackers as loners slouched anemically in the sickly light of a computer screen, but Garrett and his fellow travelers are as fit, agile, and fearless as ninja. Sharing an ethos with street artists, their mission is to exploit fractures in the architecture of the city in an effort to find deeper meaning in the spaces we pass through every day. Garrett recounts death-defying adventures in the UK, Europe, and the U.S. and shares his astonishingly dramatic photographs. Not only do place-hackers explore and document such urban ruins as abandoned factories, hospitals, and power stations; they also breach security systems to stand on the roofs of skyscrapers and tramp through sewer and subway systems. Each journey involves deep research, high risk, and profound intent. And wherever they go, they leave a sticker that reads, Explore everything. --Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Part adventure story, part ethnographic study, this work is a report on urban exploration: Is it a movement, a hobby, a lifestyle, a culture, a mode of self-expression for thrill-seekers, or a victimless crime? Apparently there are as many answers as there are underground tunnels, tall buildings, abandoned hospitals, or derelict mills to explore. Writer, photographer, and researcher Garrett (Sch. of Geography, Univ. of Oxford) recounts several of his more harrowing exploits with fellow explorers, including climbing Scotland's Firth of Forth bridge, delving into Parisian sewer tunnels, and trespassing in an airplane "boneyard" in the Mojave Desert. He also calls out the need for sensitivity in exploring in decaying but still occupied areas in Detroit or near Chernobyl. VERDICT An absorbing read, although some repetitive sections would have benefited from tighter editing, and image captions would have been welcome. In this book that is more academic in tone than a casual reader might expect, significant research is evident, and it is amusing to read quotes from Jean-Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche interspersed with those from urban exploration community members with pseudonyms such as Winch, Guts, and Ninjalicious. Recommended for travel and modern history readers.-Megan H. Fraser, Univ. of California, Los Angeles, Libs. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.