Urban exploration has been featured here once or twice before, but Jim Griffioen's site photo-documenting his discoveries in and around Detroit deserves a look. Griffioen was recently interviewed [direct mp3 link] on the American Public Media radio program The Story. [more inside]
posted by Item on Jul 25, 2009 - 14 comments

Artificial Owl is a blog about about decommissioned/abandoned modern structures, from beautiful shipwrecks to abandoned factories that look like they're straight out of a Miyazaki movie. Each post even has the Google Maps location of the site, so you can plan your journey to your favorite site of modern decay.
posted by TheRoach on May 16, 2009 - 24 comments

Detroit's Beatiful, Horrible Decline: Photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre's work in Motor City. More photography capturing abandoned properties in Detroit. (Previously, and more previously)
posted by rollbiz on Mar 13, 2009 - 56 comments

Cincinnati's Union Terminal has been named one of the top 50 architecturally significant buildings in America by the AIA. It was a major train station, abandoned, turned into a shopping mall, and now it currently houses the city's Museum Center. One problem, it's falling apart.
posted by Mick on Feb 23, 2009 - 24 comments

Braddock, Pennsylvania has been classified as a "distressed municipality." This may be an understatement: From a high of around 20,000, its population has dwindled to below 3000, many of those people unemployed. Braddock's is a landscape so grim ("a mix of boarded-up storefronts, houses in advanced stages of collapse and vacant lots") that it was selected to serve as a backdrop for the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel, The Road. Its mayor, John Fetterman, considers Braddock “a laboratory for solutions to all these maladies starting to knock on the door of every community.” [more inside]
posted by kittens for breakfast on Feb 8, 2009 - 88 comments

Blairmont: The Final Dose. Yesterday Rob Powers of Built St. Louis (prev.) completed a 189-post tour of the North St. Louis properties bought and left to ruin by developer Paul McKee's Blairmont Associates LLC. Residents trying to rebuild in this area have had to deal with nearby Blairmont properties catching fire, collapsing due to brick rustlers, and obstructing their efforts to improve their own homes. Four years this has been going on and still nobody knows what McKee is up to. Much more information at Ecology of Absence.
posted by tss on Sep 24, 2008 - 15 comments

24 Stunning HDR Photographs of Abandoned Places. 42 Essential Flickr Abandonments Groups Dedicated to Abandoned Places, Properties and Buildings.
posted by homunculus on Sep 22, 2008 - 39 comments

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea is an exhibit by Swoon composed of seven floating sculptures made from discarded materials. Following a performance tour down the Hudson River, it is docked at Deitch Studios in NYC until October 18th.
posted by lunit on Sep 9, 2008 - 4 comments

Last Days of the Old North (of England). A fascinating selection of photographs - mostly from the late sixties/early seventies documenting an era when it truly was grim up north. Made all the more interesting by the erudite and comprehensive commentary by the photographer.
posted by idiomatika on Aug 26, 2008 - 36 comments

Society In Decline Project: Intrastate Commerce
posted by Dave Faris on Aug 18, 2008 - 15 comments

Cleveland is dying, and it is beautiful. A collection of stark photographs of Cleveland as it is dying before our very eyes.
posted by Jazznoisehere on Feb 7, 2008 - 117 comments

Discussion of the beauty and consequences of urban decay pops up here from time to time. In 1992 Lambert-St. Louis International Airport began its expansion program. The airport's website has a timeline and lots of photos. Since the planning began, there has been a fair amount of controversy of one form or another surrounding the expansion. Despite all the shininess of their press releases, things are progressing very slowly. The people who have been impacted most, however, are the people who lived in the communities on top of which the expansion is happening. They have all been displaced. [more inside]
posted by jeffamaphone on Nov 21, 2007 - 11 comments

Frustrated with perceived inefficacy of local law enforcement and government, residents of Calle de la Montera have started posting video of criminal behaviour (mainly prostitution) on their street to YouTube. The Data Protection Agency (tasked with privacy enforcement) is not amused (in Spanish; machine translation), but the neighbourhood watch group maintains it is not breaking the law (m.t.).
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Oct 5, 2007 - 15 comments

The city of Detroit is in a bad way. House are cheaper than cars. The city's neighborhoods are in decay. Families are leaving. Even "revived" areas are struggling. Entire portions of the city are starting to revert to prarie and ruins. Can the city be saved or is it time to give up on the Arsenal of Democracy?
posted by fancypants on Mar 21, 2007 - 220 comments

Abandoned Memories is short on text but thick with photos. Even without captions for every picture, contextual clues can give us a disturbing idea of what life might have been like in the Wayne County Child Development Center (before it was abandoned, razed, and turned into a golf course). The rather-less-easy-to-navigate Northville-Tunnels.com also has photos and information.
posted by Gator on Feb 3, 2006 - 27 comments

Action Squad – Urban Adventurers

"In a nutshell, Action Squad explores. This generally occurs late at night, to aid in avoiding other people, particularly those with badges and funny blue uniforms. We climb buildings, sneak into factories, crawl through all kinds of tunnels, spelunk old brewery caves, poke around abandoned buildings, and run across the rooftops."

Missions of the Action Squad are fully documented with descriptions, photographs (historical & intraoperative) and sometimes maps but always with a sense of wonder at the urban flotsam they enjoy exploring.
This is my particular favourite but poke around, there's a fair bit in this gem of a site worth exploring from the armchair. [via]
posted by peacay on May 24, 2005 - 27 comments

While reading up on the Detroit City Council's latest brainstorm, African Town, I stumbled upon this blog that highlights many of the once great, now decaying buildings of my former hometown. If you've ever wondered what was inside some of those ancient, boarded up buildings, there are some great photos here.
posted by Oriole Adams on Sep 30, 2004 - 7 comments

Victorian Secrets of Washington, D.C.: haunting photos and thoughtful essays documenting one man's fight to draw attention to D.C.'s neglected architectural heritage: "This site won't be much of a beauty pagent because we 'll concentrate on buildings that are vacant, abandoned, deteriorated, distressed, or just plain at risk because they are standing in the path of development . . . if even one Victorian finds an angel because of our page, we'll consider it a thousand percent return on investment."
posted by ryanshepard on Feb 14, 2003 - 13 comments

Urban Exploration, Japanese-style: lavishly beautiful site documenting Japan's modern ruins, via gmtPlus9.
posted by ryanshepard on Jan 31, 2002 - 7 comments