Travel trends come and go.
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Many sweep through social media channels before drifting back out of public view. I’ve covered a few of these types of fast-moving trends, from rawdogging flights to testing the limits of Airport Theory. But these are the lightning version of travel trends.
If you dig deeper, you can pull back quite a few layers in the travel world, and they’ll start getting dangerous faster than you think. Enter the realm of dark tourism.
Dark tourism covers a huge gamut, from disaster tourism to visiting museums that cover tragedy. Then there’s danger tourism, a subsection that revolves around putting yourself in harm’s way for thrills.
If you let yourself drift even further down the rabbit hole, you’ll come across urban exploration. Urbex is exactly like it sounds: daredevils sneak into manmade structures (both abandoned and in use) to delve deeper and climb higher, bringing followers into the fold with riveting videos that cover their spine-tingling exploits. See The Proper People for a case study.
Whether you’d ever get into Urbex yourself, it’s not hard to see how these YouTube channels gain millions of followers. They let you follow the bravest people in the world as they sneak around larger-than-life structures, skyscrapers, bridges, tunnels, and more.
But let’s keep going—further and further to the most terrifying ledge in Urbex.
Rooftopping.
What is rooftopping? It’s a spine-tingling genre of urban exploration that revolves around traveling to the world’s grandest cities with massive skylines and climbing to the tippy top of its most beastly skyscrapers, bridges, and construction cranes.
Welcome to rooftopping
Urban exploration took off in the 1980s and 90s, as underground daredevils made their names in major cities by decalring their exploits. Some had photos, but most had street cred. Enter the reality television takeoff of the early 2000s. With the advent of handheld cameras and portable recording devices, urban exploration took to new heights—literally.
One of the first breakout stories on rooftopping was published by The Guardian back in 2017. It shed light on an already booming but still mostly underground world of rooftopping. YouTube channels took off, while the world’s most daring urban explorers took on even grander challenges. Russia, in particular, saw a massive rooftopping boom that piggybacked on the popularity of parkour.
Fast forward to 2024 and rooftoppers are still making major headlines around the world. While rooftoppers once did their thing solo, couples soon entered the fold. And one even nabbed a documentary flick from Netflix, in case you really want to experience the madness behind rooftopping.
The new rooftopping
As outlined above, the rise of YouTube and other social media channels helped put rooftopping on the map. First, it gave rooftoppers a safe platform to post their most jaw-dropping photos. Second, it allowed them to network with one another more easily. Third, it allowed them to monetize their antics.
But the old guard did things differently. The Urbex world of the 1980s and 90s revolved around secrecy. The vast majority of rooftopping stunts were done illegally, and urban explorers often provided critical intel to help their fellow climbers gain access to skyscrapers, bridges, and other landmarks.
Today, rooftopping has become so popular that some stunts fully legal and hosted by marketing companies. In other words, the art of rooftopping has been partly commoditized—but many hardcore rooftoppers still do their thing as clandestinely as possible.
And yes, it’s still a very dangerous art, with a steadily rising death count. It’s also highly illegal. The couple linked in the Netflix film above have faced arrest and charges around the world for their stunts.
Where do people go rooftopping?
Rooftopping is a global phenomenon. Wherever there’s a skyline or a well-known building, there’s the possibility of a rooftopper stopping by.
That said, these are the cities where rooftopping is popular:
- Toronto, Canada
- San Francisco, USA
- New York, USA
- Moscow, Russia
- Dubai, UAE
- Hong Kong, China
