Today you won't surprise anyone with underground structures. Metro, bunkers, parking lots, sewers have long been part of the infrastructure. However, experts argue that this is not enough: the cost of a meter of housing in metropolitan areas is growing rapidly, so the idea of underground urban planning is becoming more and more attractive for developers, when houses grow not up, but down.
CAVE MAN
We are used to living in dungeons. As you know, many ancient tribes settled in caves, which has been found a lot of evidence. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that in the era of the formation of civilization, certain peoples built underground shelters, expanding them to full-fledged settlements. An example is the area of Cappadocia, located in the east of Asia Minor, in Turkey. Due to the fact that the rocks there are composed of soft tuff, easily amenable to processing, the first artificial caves were carved out by local residents at the turn of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. As a result, several underground cities and countless underground churches appeared in Cappadocia. Many of them are in operation to this day: for example, the inhabitants of Turkish Gorem refuse to build ordinary houses, preferring to improve their old artificial caves.
In later times, growing cities also quickly acquired underground communications. Here it is appropriate to recall the French city of Noir, in which the so-called "muchet" was built in the 9th century - a refuge for the population in case of an enemy attack. It accommodated up to three thousand people, included a network of underground streets, galleries and squares located at a depth of over thirty meters.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the construction of underground living spaces became commonplace. The famous writer HG Wells even predicted in The Time Machine that someday humanity will split into two species: the refined Eloi that live on the surface, and the beast-like Morlocks that live in underground factories. In the course of the world wars and the subsequent confrontation between the superpowers, the state need arose to build spacious shelters in which the population could hide from devastating bombing or artillery attacks. The most impressive monument of that era was the underground complex of Beijing, which was able to accommodate about three hundred thousand people in the event of a nuclear strike on the Chinese capital. The total area of the shelter was 85 sq. km., there were built residential areas, restaurants and shops, schools and hospitals,factories and warehouses, even a skating rink was organized. For two decades, the city of refuge was completely abandoned, but in 2000 it was decided to rebuild and open to visitors - as a museum, a trading platform and a place for cheap hotels.
VERTICAL DOWN
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Today, any more or less large city has under its surface shopping galleries, business centers, parking areas connected to the metro or other transport networks. The most developed in this sense is underground Montreal, called the "inner city". According to statistics, it is visited by up to half a million people a day. There is everything you need for the life of a city dweller: offices, shops, hotels, roads, automobile and railway stations. The total area of "inner" Montreal is 3.5 million square meters. m. Inhabitants of ordinary houses that have an exit there, prefer not to rise to the surface at all, especially when cold or inclement weather reigns outside. As a result, city streets are unloaded, there are fewer traffic jams, and it becomes possible to create more pedestrian and park areas.
Other metropolitan areas experiencing overcrowding problems are also targeting Montreal. For example, the project of an "inner city" for one hundred (!) Tiers has been accepted for implementation in Chicago. Over the next decade, it is planned to organize a huge number of underground premises with a total volume of 230 million cubic meters. m, with horizontal and vertical communications. About one hundred thousand people will live in this "earth scraper", as journalists call it. The construction cost is estimated at $ 15 billion. A project of a similar "earth-scraper" with a depth of 400 meters is also going to be implemented in Dubai.
Other projects are being discussed, striking not so much in scale as in exotic solutions. Under Zocalo, the main square in Mexico City, a 70-story "earth scraper" in the form of an inverted pyramid with a transparent ceiling is about to be dug. The total area of the complex will be 775 thousand square meters. m., depth - 300 meters. The top ten floors will house a museum center representing the history of pre-Columbian America, below - shopping malls and hotels. Another unusual underground city, similar to a cluster of honeycombs, is planned to be built in the Nevada desert. The authors of the project are confident that they can make it completely self-sufficient, using energy on renewable resources (sunlight and wind) and an ingenious system for extracting water from the air. Lighting can be provided using periscope mirrors or fiber optic technology.
In Russia, the project "Eco-city-2020" with a capacity of up to 100 thousand people is being discussed, aimed at the development of the Yakut city of Mirny. In a quarry left over from a mined diamond deposit (the Mir kimberlite pipe), 530 meters deep, they are going to build a megalopolis covered with a transparent dome. There are many sunny days, so the dome will be made up of solar panels in part. Due to the earth's heat in the interior, the climate will be milder than outside. The inhabited space is proposed to be divided into three tiers: the lower one is for growing agricultural products ("vertical farm"), the middle one is a forest park recreational zone, the upper one is residential and work premises. Ventilation is provided naturally, due to the difference in pressure between cold and warm air. The proposed technical solution allows you to create an urban planning formation without heat-saving enclosing structures: their function will be performed by the walls of the quarry.
SEA CIVILIZATION
The famous millionaire visionary Elon Musk is also a supporter of underground urbanism. He also believes that in the future, our civilization should hide its industry and transport deep under the surface of the earth and water, leaving only houses, gardens and agricultural land at the top. One of the first projects to implement this venture should be a network of underground roads connecting not only urban areas, but also different cities. The fundamental difference between Musk's roads and our usual automobile tunnels is that cars will move through them not on their own, but on special electrified platforms moving along a kind of rail. Due to the rigid organization of traffic, excluding the poorly predictable will of drivers, it is planned to significantly increase the throughput of the tunnels,safety and speed. In January 2017, Elon Musk announced the start of construction of a test tunnel that would link the offices of his two companies.
Musk's project is criticized for its high cost and dubious operational prospects, but it must be borne in mind: it looks far into the future, and all of his initiatives are aimed at implementation both on Earth and on the planets of the solar system. Conditions on the Moon, Mars and Ceres - that is, the nearest celestial bodies that are suitable for colonization - are such that normal life on the surface is impossible there, since there is no air shell and a magnetic field that protects against cosmic radiation. Therefore, all projects of alien bases and cities assume their placement in structures covered with domes on top under a layer of soil.
It turns out that the experience of building "earth scrapers" will be in demand in the distant future, when mankind will seriously engage in the development of the vast expanses of the Universe. All that remains is to defeat claustrophobia, but this is not the biggest problem to be solved.
Anton Pervushin