ABSTRACT
Using the leisure practice known as urban exploration as its critical focus, this chapter encourages readers to look at the idea of “community” in a nuanced way. By challenging the concept and arguing that it should be viewed in relation to wider societal changes, the chapter suggests that the general idea of “community” has been transformed as people have become more individualized. To unpack the idea of “community” in present modernity, the chapter analyses the social dynamics of a small group of urban explorers by drawing on a short ethnographic excerpt together with Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia. In other words, this chapter explores the quixotic qualities of a certain kind of “community” and what it tells the reader is that urban explorers seek the purported warmth and comforts of a very particular type of “home” that is determinedly performative and always on the move.
