Urban Decay - a critical curiosity



Baltimore, MD - Fall 2009



The recent swell of interest in urban decay has fascinated me for a few years now. As a student studying urban planning and design, it was all the rage. It has become the subject of innumerable budding photographers, graffiti artists, architects, urban explorers, and anyone interested in urban land. I have since taken a step back to critically examine this particular trend.  

"Why?" you ask. Why the fascination with the morbidity of the built environment?

Urban decay touches upon a myriad of modern conditions, both personal and environmental: 

-     They allow us to imagine one version of the future.

-     They satisfy a need for danger and risk, both perceived and real

-     They attract us with the fantasy of the unknown and foreign

-     They connect us to histories - some familiar, some unrelated to our own

-     They collect their own users and inhabitants - wildlife, artists, explorers, delinquents, recluses, etc.

The Roman Froum - Summer 2008

 Urban decay was initially fascinating to me because it is a very dynamic intersection between man and nature.


“Is it a building in the woods, or are the woods now in the building?”


I like the grey areas; where you can’t quite tell where the pavement ends, where the surface beneath your feet is an accumulation of time.


Landschaftspark - Duisburg Nord, Germany - Summer 2008

If you have ever come across, or had the chance to explore one of these places, they are intoxicating for the imagination. Ever dream of finding an ancient Mayan city, like Indiana Jones? Just like the subjects of Dr. Jones’ studies, that is precisely what these places are – artifacts. Rich with clues, treasures (objectively speaking), and hints of a life we may find it hard to imagine.


For western culture, a romanticism of the old begins at the Renaissance. As learning and the arts retuned to a Europe slowly crawling out of a dark hole, they looked to the only signs of civilization they knew, the Roman ruins. Being that these ruins pepper the countryside of Europe, and in many cases actually provided the foundation for the modern cities we know today, it was a natural curiosity that drove these early thinkers into the rubble.

The Roman Forum - Summer 2008

At the dawn of the 20^th century, rising nationalism, combined with a yearning for a simpler past in hard times (the industrial revolution had begun to lose its novelty in Europe after the first “mechanized war”, WWI) brought about a renewed interest in the castles and the lore of old. Romanticized and politically tinged, ruins provided a physical rallying point, and metaphor, for supremacist ideologies - not to name names.


But, of course, all of this is Euro-centric, and fails to address the complex relationship between Americans and our “virgin land”. One could understand the lure of a place where no grand ruins existed to be claimed by one party or another as their entitlement to the land. And while the Native Americans left no stone arches or viaducts, their monumental works, be it the earthen mounds of the Mississippi people or Mayan jungle cities, were summarily dismissed by early settlers. In this land without a strong physical legacy of civilization, ruins were anomaly and despised by the “cult of the new.”


American values forsake the old for the new. We are a culture of the latest-and-greatest – and that subject alone could fill many volumes. For there to be a recent interest in the abandoned places of old, for me, points to a certain cultural maturity. This type of introspective reflection could be said to be indicative of a society trying to find its way, of a people attempting to reconnect to a “golden era”, or just a fad interest in destruction.


Abandoned places are indicative of LOST value. At one point, the decrepit warehouse, vacant lot, or rotting shell of a building was someone's great investment. The place held promise, its structures were dreamed of, labored over, and then occupied. 

Underground at the McMillan Water Filtration Plant - Washington D.C.

Today we find these structures and landscape on the front lines of the battle against time. Nature creeps in to reclaim walls and roofs for photosynthesis. Materials, assembled and sorted for the needs of man, begin the slow process of redistribution with the help of fungus, plants, insects, weathering and gravity. Like glaciated moonscapes, asphalt and concrete swaths are colonized at first by the simplest of organisms, graduating through time to support a complex ecosystem. To witness this process in action is to witness life at its most virile. It is in, and on, these abandoned places that the pioneers are engaged in a race to claim new territory. Generally, buildings, while occupied, and their accompanying lots have a dearth of biodiversity. Imagine them as the opposite of an oasis - a dead zone, like a lava flow. But as human use and upkeep (the constant energy inputs to keep entropy at bay) desist, the “wild" spills back in. 

Baltimore, MD - Fall 2009

What was once the fate of urban industrial activity has now spread to our malls, shopping centers and even our neighborhoods. The pendulum has swung. And so it is that the phenomenon of decay has become entered into many places it was formerly unheard of - but isn’t that the way it always is?

Survival in the urban desert - thriving under a roof drain. 

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, as the cores of America’s great urban centers rotted away, we busied ourselves shielding our lives from the realities of living in a post-industrial country. With a renewed interest in urban living, money has returned to many cities spurring investment and redevelopment. After the business districts are restored the next stop for the urban land speculators are the formerly industrial areas of a city. The examples are endless – of factory lofts, warehouse retail outlets, complete with exposed piping and ductwork. Some might argue that the abandoned factories of the late 20^th century are becoming a rarity in many of the places they were made iconic.


These places are contradictions. In one way they illuminate the past, and in another they are prescient of the future. They are both foreign and familiar. They are created by loss and misfortune, yet continue to inspire. When viewed through the right lens, they can be spaces of opportunity. In our current times improving upon the existing, reusing materials previously harvested and processed, and up-cycling the frameworks we have inherited must be part of any comprehensive plan for future growth.

McMillan Water Filtration Cisterns and Sand Silos - Washington D.C.

In the end, whatever it may look like, a certain segment of people will always wonder with fascination at the places of man being overcome by time and natural forces. To create and build is to take a stab at immortality. In witnessing the erasure of the work of others we are humbled and reminded of our own inevitable decline.