About Urbex Planet
Community-first urban exploration with real-time maps, offline tools, and respectful sharing.
Our Mission
Urbex Planet is built by and for urban explorers. We create respectful tools to discover, document, and protect fascinating spaces — from abandoned industry to hidden infrastructure — while prioritizing safety, preservation, and privacy. Every feature is shaped with community feedback, ethical exploration, and long-term stewardship in mind.
Beyond a Map: The Explorer's Community Platform
Urbex Planet is fundamentally different from other urbex resources. We're not just a map—we're a thriving community of architects, historians, photographers, explorers, and heritage enthusiasts united by a passion for documenting the stories embedded in abandoned spaces.
Architectural & Historical Documentation: Urban exploration is both an art and a scholarly pursuit. It combines photography, architectural analysis, and historical research to preserve the narratives of structures no longer in use. From forgotten factories and derelict hospitals to hidden bunkers and abandoned civic infrastructure, each location holds cultural and historical significance. We provide a platform where these discoveries are systematically documented, researched, and preserved for future generations.
Responsible Stewardship: We champion the ethos of ethical exploration: observe, photograph, and document, but leave sites as you found them and treat them with the respect they deserve. Our community is dedicated to ensuring that fragile locations are protected through responsible knowledge-sharing, verified demolition tracking, and careful visibility controls that balance discovery with preservation.
Tools Built for Collaboration: Unlike simple mapping platforms, Urbex Planet includes real-time chat, resource libraries for publishing guides and research, curated collections, reputation systems that reward expertise, and Discord integration for seamless community coordination. You can collaborate with subject-matter experts, contribute historical context, share preparation guides, and build knowledge collectively.
Whether you're a seasoned urban explorer, architectural historian, photographer, or simply curious about our built heritage, Urbex Planet offers the tools and community to contribute meaningfully to the global documentation of these remarkable spaces. Join us in ensuring that the beauty, history, and architectural significance of abandoned places are preserved and celebrated for years to come.
What You Can Do
- Explore the Map: Browse the full-screen map, switch basemaps, reveal heatmaps, and dive into curated lists like Top, Most Popular, and Recent pins.
- Save Places: Mark locations as Visited or Want to Visit, track progress, and surface highlights on your profile dashboard.
- Build Collections: Organize themed lists with drag-and-drop ordering, private or shareable visibility, and optional embeds on your profile.
- Add & Curate Pins: Submit new locations with demolition status, field notes, EXIF-aware media uploads, and auto-detection for duplicates. Offline queue v2 keeps drafts safe until you reconnect.
- Vote, Discuss, Mention: Upvote, suggest edits, drop comments with lightweight markdown, and mention explorers to notify them across web and Discord bridges.
- Follow Explorers: Follow profiles, curate watchlists, and fine-tune follower visibility controls from profile settings.
- Personalize & Sync: Your filters, layers, effects, and viewing radius save to your account and instantly hydrate across desktop, mobile, and PWA installs.
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Search Smart:
Find pins, users, or coordinates (for example
40.7128,-74.0060), jump to the map, and refine results with quick filters. - Chat & Messages: Join the real-time chat, bridge conversations with Discord, swap DMs, and archive important mentions.
- Import & Export: Bring in KML, CSV, JSON, or ZIP lists through Import with audit logging and admin-controlled toggles.
- Resources Library: Publish Markdown guides, release files with download safeguards, and notify the community when visibility allows via Resources.
- Install the PWA: Add Urbex Planet to your home screen for offline caching, background sync, and queue-backed uploads when signal is limited.
Map & PWA Ecosystem
The Urbex Planet map is engineered for fast, reliable exploration. We pair clustered vector tiles with adaptive caching so every pan and zoom feels instant, even on mobile connections.
- Offline queue v2: stores edits, photos, and imports locally with retry backoff and sync notifications.
- Smart hydration: sessions restore saved filters, overlays, and timezone-awareness the moment you sign in.
- Telemetry-informed tuning: performance metrics feed the admin dashboard so we can fine-tune map layers and worker behavior in real time.
Community & Discord Bridge
Discord is woven into Urbex Planet. Authentication, verification, and communication all stay in sync so explorers never miss an update.
- Unified identity: Discord OAuth powers sign-in, role sync, and verification badges across web and bot experiences.
- Realtime mirroring: key chat channels bridge to the site, sharing announcements, approvals, and moderation alerts automatically.
- Automation: the Urbex Planet bot manages onboarding flows, delivers reminders, and can bulk-sync roles on demand.
Reputation & Trust
Every member has a reputation score that tracks sustained, constructive participation across the map, resources, and community channels. The score helps surface reliable contributors and informs moderation workflows.
- Earn points for accurate pins, demolition confirmations, high-quality resources, and helpful votes or comments.
- Daily caps and domain weight limits prevent score spikes and encourage steady, long-term collaboration.
- Verified explorers and editors receive small multipliers for vetting work, while policy violations or spam reduce scores quickly.
Score weights are transparent to admins and fine-tuned through telemetry so the system highlights trustworthy explorers without replacing human judgment.
Safety, Respect, and Ethics
Urban exploration can be risky. Urbex Planet promotes respectful behavior: respect property and local laws, preserve sites, travel prepared, and never endanger yourself or others. Community-sourced information may age quickly, so double-check demolition flags, read recent comments, and use your judgment.
Safety advisories, incident reminders, and local ordinance notes are surfaced in pin cards when moderators flag them. Review our Terms and Privacy Policy for full guidelines.
Moderation & Anti‑Abuse
- Rate limits, automated duplicate detection, and context-aware reporting funnels keep content useful.
- Editors and admins triage reports, adjust metadata, merge duplicates, and remove harmful content with full audit trails.
- City, subnet, and device bans mitigate abuse at scale; maintenance mode and import toggles give staff emergency controls.
Privacy‑First Design
- Only the data required to operate the platform, authenticate, and fight abuse is stored.
- Profile fields such as joined date, last active, timezone, and stats include per-field visibility controls.
- Analytics run through consent-aware instrumentation that staff can toggle in System Settings; no third-party ad trackers.
- Offline caches and queue storage live locally on your device and clear on sign-out.
- See our Privacy Policy for details.
Platform Foundations
Behind the scenes, automation keeps Urbex Planet healthy, fast, and resilient.
- Automated backups: scheduled jobs package MongoDB snapshots, rotate archives, and surface logs to the admin dashboard.
- Demolition cleanup: purge jobs archive demolished pins based on retention policies to keep maps relevant.
- IndexNow SEO: location updates can ping search engines instantly to refresh public listings.
- Telemetry: real-time metrics track announcements, queue health, and map performance so staff can respond quickly.
Pin Visibility & Privacy
Choosing the right visibility controls who can view and interact with a pin. The default is Members. You can change visibility anytime in the pin editor.
- Public: Visible to everyone (no account required). Appears on public lists and category pages and may be indexed by search engines. Best for well‑known or resilient places.
- Members: Visible only to signed‑in, approved members. Hidden from public lists, category pages, and search engines. Good for sensitive but shareable sites.
- Verified: Visible only to verified explorers, plus editors/admins and the pin owner. Use for high‑risk or fragile locations.
- Private: Visible only to you (the owner). Not shareable publicly — useful as drafts or for personal notes.
- Only Public pins are included in category pages and our sitemap for discovery.
- Media, comments, and votes inherit the pin’s visibility.
- Changing a pin’s visibility updates where it can be seen immediately.
Note: Verified is a higher‑trust rank that’s manually granted by staff and is distinct from standard Member status obtained via application.
Why apply?
Applying for membership helps protect sensitive places while growing a trusted community. Approved members can unlock pins marked for Members, collaborate in chat, manage collections, and use advanced map layers. The application is free, reviewed by real moderators, and looks at your exploration history, contributions, and community fit.
Built for the Community
Urbex Planet evolves alongside explorer feedback. Recent sprints delivered the offline queue overhaul, faster map rendering, richer resources, Discord-driven verification sync, and improved accessibility. Next up: deeper collection collaboration, enhanced safety advisories, and smarter search.
Found a bug or have an idea? Open a bug report, suggest a feature, or email [email protected]. Community insight shapes every release.
Support & Sustainability
Urbex Planet is sustained by community contributions, volunteers, and supporters who believe in ethical exploration.
- Donations and merch orders help fund hosting, map tiles, backups, and ongoing security work.
- Moderators, editors, and subject-matter experts volunteer time to vet reports and document demolition history.
- Open collaboration invites developers, designers, photographers, and historians to help shape future releases.
Stay Connected
Follow our social channels for updates, features, and highlights from the community.