While I was browsing my favored geography/travel news related outlets this morning, I happened upon a slideshow of the new UNESCO world heritage sites for this year. I used to pay a lot more attention to the UNESCO lists than I do today – when I was younger, UNESCO’s curated lists seemed to apply more to my travel style than they do now. That said, looking through the list of 2015 inscriptions was a bit surprising to me – included were several places I would have never thought of as being UNESCO World Heritage material.
Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution?
Speicherstadt and Kontorhaus District with Chilehaus, Hamburg, Germany?
Rjukan-Notodden Industrial Heritage Site, Norway?
Fray-Bentos Cultural-Industrial Landscape, Uruguay?
I will admit that I was only familiar with the first of the four new inscriptions (out of 24 total) listed above. Hashima, or Gunkanjima (literally “Battleship Island” due to its resemblance of a warship, with tall buildings jutting straight out of the water), is an urban explorer Mecca – built in the late 20th century, it had the dubious honor of being the most densely populated area of the world for several years, due to the huge numbers of slave laborers and their families imported from various parts of the Japanese empire to feed its war machine during WW2. It is one of 23 industrial sites part of the grouping of “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution” inscribed today.
Hashima is located in Nagasaki prefecture, a short boat ride from the city of Nagasaki itself. And while Nagasaki is my favorite Japanese city, I was unaware of Hashima’s presence (it was off limits to tourists or any non-officials until 2009) the two times I visited Nagasaki as a young person, in 2003 and 2007. At those points in my life, I typically traveled with a checklist of sites to see populated from top recommendations in a guidebook.
I acknowledge that I am a newcomer to the world of urban exploration. But from my experience, these types of places – the urban, rusted, concrete places of dubious (at best) or nefarious (at worst) origins – are typically far off the mainstream tourist radar. For me, that is a large part of their appeal. I can explore lesser known relics that are aesthetically appealing to me and that suit my eccentric travel preferences.
Is the UNESCO inscription indicative of a larger paradigm shift in global travel/sight-seeing preferences? Are folks becoming more interested in architecture tourism – of the industrial/brutal/concrete variety? Are urban explorers no longer special traveler snowflakes? From these inscriptions, it appears to be that way. Not that I believe UNESCO is informed by consumer demand in any way when deciding what to include on their list – I understand the lobbying process various governments undertake when bidding for sites to be included on their list.
Nor do I want to conflate listings with actual significant cultural importance or interest. I have been to many sites on the list in my various travels, and some of them, I believe, weren’t the most thought through. Even this year, the addition of the Baekje Historic Areas in Korea, seems to me to be a bit of a stretch – Buyeo, Korea, it’s not you, it’s me. But I do think that nations choose sites to promote to UNESCO based at least in some part on potential for mass market tourist appeal – and I find it hard to believe that there aren’t about a million uninscribed temples or castles in Japan that get more tourists than Gunkanjima.
It could have to do with the fact that young tourists and travelers (I personally refuse to imbue any sort of difference between the two – i.e. tourists are not “lesser” than travelers, in my opinion) weren’t raised in a time (at least in industrialized nations) when these monuments to industry were functional, but rather, grew up during a time when they had fallen out of use. When structures lose their function, they are usually either torn down or made to function in some ornamental fashion – and when I think about the different industrial landscapes I’ve witnessed and explored, like Alaverdi, Armenia, and Chiatura, Georgia, they are certainly beautiful. Even if that beauty is far from a traditional Forbidden City/Versailles/Buckingham Palace/Machu Picchu kind of way.
So perhaps our definition of beauty is changing in addition to having enough history separating us from these places to make them interesting and relevant to our travels. I guess it’s a good thing. Perhaps added interest from UNESCO will stop the destruction of these incredible monoliths around the world, and promote preservation. Or if you’re a pessimist, the possible downside is that, like many sites in less developed nations with less advanced tourist infrastructure, increased numbers of visitors may only serve to hasten the degradation of these sites.
And with these sites listed by UNESCO today, what’s next? Chiatura’s Manganese Mining “Industrial Landscape”? Or Bulgaria’s Buzludzha Communist “Cultural Monument”? My upcoming trip to the Baltic states will be peppered by visits to many abandoned and decaying places, Soviet and not, and no small part of the allure those destinations had was their obscurity relative to the more frequented Nordic and Eastern European nations that surround the region. It is that obscurity that keeps these places hidden from guidebooks and mainstream travel companies – that obscurity that attracts tourists like me to them.
Either way, I had better get to Hashima/Gunkanjima soon, before it’s too late.
Do you like exploring urban ruins or decay while you travel? Where have you been that you found particularly captivating? What makes it captivating for you?
