Of particular relevance for criminologists however, edgework, “sneaky thrills” (Katz, 1988), and the physical and mental challenges involved in both circumventing physical security measures and evading and outwitting security guards and the police, are all central to the motivation for, and experience of, recreational trespass. The motivations behind my own and others’ participation in recreational trespass are various and diverse: the curious desire to experience illicit sights, sound- and smellscapes for oneself photographic interest architectural and historical geekery and one-upmanship, to name a few. I’ll leave discussions of the ethics of illegal research for another blog post, but suffice to say that Jeff Ferrell and Craig Ancrum have both tackled the subject eloquently. During the past three years, I have conducted autoethnographic research into urban exploration, participating in over a hundred trespass events, and illicitly accessing sites including, but not limited to: many of London’s most notable highrise construction developments under-construction Crossrail tunnels and stations the under-construction Lee Tunnel “super sewer” the under-redevelopment Battersea Power Station the London Olympic Stadium, and other locations perhaps best not mentioned here. A small but growing research literature has accompanied the practice’s proliferation (see, for example, Bennett, 2011 Garrett, 2013 Mott and Roberts, 2014). In the past two decades, and particularly since the mid-2000s, an emergent global subculture has coalesced around this activity, facilitated by the Internet and online discussion forums such as 28 Days Later (taking its name from the 2002 British post-apocalyptic horror film). Such places typically include: derelict industrial sites, closed hospitals or asylums, abandoned military installations, construction sites and cranes, sewer and storm drain networks, subterranean utility tunnels and rapid transit (metro) systems – the list goes on. Recreational trespass, or as it has become known in recent years, “urban exploration” (often abbreviated as UrbEx or UE) is the practice of illicitly gaining access to forbidden, forgotten or otherwise off-limits places, ‘simply for the joy of doing so’ and / or in order to document them photographically (Garrett, 2013: 21). Under London, an urban explorer is dwarfed by the massive Lee Tunnel “super sewer” construction, the deepest and largest tunnel ever built under the city.
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