Bouldering and Climbing are Sports that have become attractive for a broad range of people establishing them as leading sports in countries all over the world. As more and more artificial halls are being built, to meet the needs of people dedicated to the sports, alternative ways of practicing are becoming more popular as well. This goes along with mankind being drawn into Cities as the movement of urbanization is topping one record after the other. With metropolitan areas reaching up to 38 million people, urban agglomerations with more than one million people are on the rise and pose additional and different requirements on urban infrastructure, smart city concepts, sports facilities and activities. Here Buildering points out how new city sport concepts can be developed.
The Sport of Buildering (Bouldering and Climbing on buildings and urban structures) has been around for already over 120 years. And is getting more and more attention, as people want to try different challenges besides the normal ways of Gym climbing.
To answer the question why to practice such an unorthodox Sport shortly, it can be said, that it can be performed everywhere in the world within short distance and without long travel, even in the absence of mountains or rock structures. Buildering is free of charge and therefore gives access to all people despite the status of their wallet filling. As a last important fact, Buildering opens up space for Sport activities without new construction work or space needed, as established building facades can be used.
Rock climbing and bouldering in urban space, like skateboarding in the 1950s, is a way of using urban space as an alternative playground. New concepts for urban development could emerge through temporary use of building facades, which integrates consideration of the sporty use of buildings from the first planning on. Similarly, as there is already a re-working of roofs with little or no use in roof gardens, which is understood by the term "urban gardening".
This book is meant to be a compilation, guidebook and manual for Buildering and a compilation of incredible places where people have climbed in urban environments. It should give an overview of the current environment and activities and is therefore enriched by comments of other active players such as Andy Day and Drew Herder.
The story and content of the book:
By gathering available information on places worldwide where people have been bouldering and climbing on buildings and urban structures, this book summarizes the available content which can be used to either become active on the established sites and spots or become creative by identifying Spots and places to climb or boulder by having the right background when studying the places represented in this book.
Besides summarizing worldwide available content the book guides the reader to videos, beta information or web data bases to have access to all existing information on the topic.
In total this book brings together:
145 Cities (and more then)
1.000 Spots with countless Routes
...with information from local people and a whole lot of creativity and motivation.
To see where the Spots are located, you can use the preview into the book to have a loook at the Maps inside the book.
Major Countries with urban Spots are:
Austria
Canada
Croatia
Denmark
England
France
Germany
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
Poland
Spain
Switzerland
United States of America