Urban underground space: Solving the problems of today’s cities

TLDR

Urbanisation worldwide creates infrastructure demands and environmental pressures that underground space can help cities meet while maintaining compactness. The paper demonstrates innovative underground uses for commercial, residential, storage, water conveyance and treatment, and heritage conservation, showing how such solutions can optimise urban development. By evaluating underground solutions from the planning or initial project stages, the study identifies more optimal urban development options. The findings show that underground applications can provide more optimal solutions for urban development across multiple functions.

Abstract

The world-wide trend of increased urbanisation creates problems for expanding and newly-developing cities alike. Population increase leads to an increased demand for reliable infrastructure, nowadays combined with a need for increased energy efficiency and a higher environmental awareness of the public. The use of underground space can help cities meet these increased demands while remaining compact, or find the space needed to include new functions in an existing city landscape. In many cases, underground solutions to urban problems are only considered if all other (above ground) options have been exhausted. When underground solutions are considered and evaluated from the planning or initial project stages onwards, more optimal solutions will become possible. Use of the underground is not limited to large scale infrastructure projects. This paper also shows innovative use of the underground for commercial and residential use, storage, water conveyance and treatment, and heritage conservation, and highlights how use of underground can bring more optimal solutions for urban development.