Petrified ruin: Chernobyl, Pripyat and the death of the city

Ozymandias in the Anthropocene: The city as an emerging landform

“…The timescales over which these processes operate, the morphology of the resultant landforms and their persistence or transience in the landscape over decadal timescales are entirely unknown, yet much information could be gleaned from cities like London, where abandoned tube stations were isolated and preserved by Luftwaffe bombing runs that destroyed surface structures during the Second World War (Dobraszczyk, Galviz, & Garrett, ; Garrett, ). Additionally, urban areas that have been abandoned as a result of disaster, such as at Chernobyl or Fukushima, or neglected because of economic downturns and/or social unrest, such as Detroit (Dobraszczyk, ; Moore & Levine, ), would be useful case studies. Although building materials and styles have changed extensively throughout history, an effective understanding of these processes could also aid archaeological research, shedding light on how abandoned urban areas are reshaped by earth surface processes and thus helping to interpret the forms that may be preserved in the archaeological record (DeSilvey, ).…”

Introduction: Towards a Political Understanding of New Ruins

“…In doing so, we seek to move some way to a knowledge of urban ruins which is ‘situated’ (Haraway, ), related to their local politics, regional geographies and national histories; we seek to move beyond the apolitical readings of de‐industrialized landscapes that Noreen Malone () suggests as characteristic of aestheticized representations of cities undergoing economic decline, most especially in the case of Detroit. Malone's commentary sits within a longer history of criticizing visual representations of decay: Dobraszczyk (: 381) reminds us that ever since John Ruskin's disapproval of the ruination trope in the Victorian picturesque tradition in art ‘as indulging a delight that suspended any human implications, images of ruins have run the risk of obscuring the human loss that is always part of their story’. Indeed, Dobraszczyk continues to reflect on his own photography of the surviving architectural artefacts of Pripyat, emptied in the aftermath of Chernobyl, and the ‘relative powerlessness of photographs to represent an experience that was defined by an increasing awareness of incommensurable loss’ ( ibid .…”

“…Ruins can also act as relics of state power, as explored in the literature reflecting on the post‐Soviet landscape (e.g. Lahusen, ; Andreassen et al ., ; Dobraszczyk, ; Light and Young, ; Pusca, ). In her account of the vast Prora resort complex built by the Third Reich and occupied by the Soviet and East German militaries in the postwar period, Van der Hoorn (: 189–90) argues that ruined architecture can ‘act as an intermediary onto which people can project their memories, frustrations or experiences with regard to the object that used to occupy an important place’.…”

Undertaking recreational trespass: urban exploration and infiltration

“…Second, I will highlight the process of this particular research project by drawing on four years of ethnographic immersion as a practising urban explorer to emphasise the continuing value of deep ethnography within geography. Finally, as a direct result of that immersion, I seek to veer the focus from recent urban exploration accounts as dereliction tourism (for example, see Bennett ; Dobraszczyk ; Edensor ; Garrett ; High and Lewis ; Lipman ; Trigg ; Veitch ) to discuss more political aspects of the practice, where urban exploration operates as a spatial security probe and disarmament tactic. In short I suggest, through my experiences and discussions with urban explorers, that the practice is (re)surfacing as a modern coping strategy for encountering cities that are increasingly closed, constricted and off‐limits.…”