Would you live in an underground city?

When we think of densification, we tend to look up. High-rises are the natural response to the need for more housing in already jam-packed areas. With this week’s discovery of the ruins of an early 19th century market under the St. Lawrence Market, though, I was reminded that we neglect to look down.

It’s not like it’s new. There are centuries-old underground cities in Poland, Iran and, among the most famous owing to its presumed thousands of past residents, Derinkuyu, Turkey. There are huge city-like bunkers in Berlin and Beijing. There’s the mining town of Coober Pedy in Australia, built so workers could escape the punishing heat. Here in Toronto and in Montreal too, we have embraced the idea of underground shopping, eating and lingering, but not living.

I have always written off the lack of interest in subterranean dwelling to poor light, dampness, and other assorted conditions that might turn us into morlocks. But with technology being what it is, and what it is rapidly becoming, is it time to revisit the underground city?

Two-thirds of us are expected to be city-dwellers by mid-century, and if the trend holds, all of us will want to be within half an hour of Yonge Street. Something’s gotta give.

Singapore’s Associated Research Centre for the Urban Underground Space has come up with the Underground Society City, a 300,000 square metre R&D complex designed to support a working population of more than 4,000 in the biomedicine and biochemistry fields. In Mexico City, where heritage bylaws restrict building in the centre of town, BNKR Arquitectura has come up with the Earthscraper, which features a glass ceiling on its inverted-pyramid shape, giving some light to the 5,000 proposed residents.

Have you seen the windowless plane? In it, the surface of every interior wall is a real-time projection of what’s going on outside. This design was born of the desire to make planes lighter (and thereby cheaper to fly) by eliminating windows. The UK techno-wizards who came up with the idea say it could be in the air in the next decade. All you need to do to believe in the quality of the image is to check out a 4K television at your local department store.

Imagine then, that instead of the airless, soulless, windowless universe that is, say, Vegas, we could create a visual experience outside our windows that is completely indistinguishable from the outdoors – builders could even erase the blights they don’t want, turning a lousy second-floor view of the Gardiner into a lakeview penthouse. And hey, why even limit yourself to Toronto? Your Liberty Village digs could have a view of the Seine for that matter. Or the moon.

You wouldn’t have to give up your balcony; it could feature the same perfect yet fake views, but with some added effects pumped in, say scent and wind variations. No doubt some purists would insist it isn’t comparable to the real thing, but once you’re sufficiently deep into the Matrix, what’s the functional difference? If it looks like the city, smells like the city and sounds like the city, isn’t it the city?

But can even such technology overcome the human mind’s natural conviction that underground spaces are dark, claustrophobic and just downright spooky?

According to Scandinavian researcher Gunnar D Jenssen, yes we can. Jenssen spends his time researching underground psychology and space design, and told the BBC, “If you give these [severely claustrophobic] people something that gives them perceived control over the situation, they accept being in it. That is the key…The basic thing you have to have there is clean air, you have to have the space, it has to be spacious or perceived to be spacious. You can use illusions but the best bet is if it is really spacious and has good lighting.”

It would make sense to avoid the issue by putting our roads underground and keeping the people above it, but there’s a heck of a lot of money involved in “retrofitting” an entire city. Moving forward, if we ever are going to live underground, we’re going to have to embrace the idea ourselves. No matter what happens, whether through higher taxes to move some roads, through our choice of personal residence, or simply through our being forced to live two hours away from jobs because we just run out of space, we’re going to end up paying for it.

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Feature image via ArchDaily.com