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Posted By: Dark Knight Aug 15, 2003 - 08:10 pm

Sub-Urban Renewal

Thanks to new tunneling technologies, real estate trends are down. Way down.

By Fred Hapgood

It's the mantra of every silver-tongued real estate agent straining to close a deal: They're not making any more land. But imagine if they were. Suppose acres of new land could be manufactured just like I-beams, bolts of cloth, or toothpaste. And what if this man-made frontier could be rolled out anywhere, even in the heart of the densest metropolis, without displacing anyone?

Well, it can. The world's cities may be overcrowded, and the suburbs that surround them may be choked by unchecked sprawl, but there's plenty of undeveloped space. It's right at your feet: underground. There are 100 quadrillion cubic feet of undeveloped metropolitan real estate in this country alone, and that's counting just the first mile down. Think of it this way: If everyone in the entire country moved to Los Angeles, each of us could have 2 million cubic feet to house our stuff. How does that compare with where you live now?

You won't hear much talk of it outside of specialized engineering circles, but we're at a tipping point. The cost to burrow down is dropping, while the price (and hassle) of erecting a skyscraper in a dense urban area just keeps rising. The breakthrough comes thanks to tunneling technologies that are now being used on huge transportation projects, like Boston's Big Dig and Moscow's Lefortovo highway tunnel project. Over the next 10 years these techniques will be used to hollow out space beneath the world's great cities.

The last stop on this train is the ultimate TBM megaproject: a supersonic world subway. Maglev trains running through depressurized tunnels are the logical successor to airplanes, at least between large cities. Magnetic levitation would eliminate rolling resistance, and the vacuum does the same to air resistance. The trains could "fly" down the tracks at many times the speed of the Concorde - without creating a sonic boom. In a couple of decades, we may see a world where major international cities are within a few hours' commute of each other.

By 2005, some under-urban highway projects will start to include parking lots. Where there is parking, malls will spring up. By 2008, developers might offer these retailers subterranean warehouse space, then offices, and, finally, full-fledged industrial parks. By 2013, we could see some hotels, probably marketed to international commuters and located just below the financial centers of Tokyo, London, and New York.

Some cities have already started to expand underground. Both Toronto and Montreal have extensive downtown retail complexes below the surface. "It keeps Montreal's core dense and lively," says Jacques Besner, a city spokesperson, "which can be a challenge in a climate like ours." Likewise, Kansas City has 20 million square feet of light industrial space sited in old quarries beneath the city. Commercial tenants prefer the location because the ambient temperature of Earth's crust - about 57 degrees Fahrenheit year-round - keeps energy costs low.

If they are large enough, caverns will feel like the outdoors; they might even be plumbed for "rain" and specially vented to create "wind." Artificial weather will keep the air crisp, while artificial light sources - from vast LED arrays, fiber pipes carrying light from the surface, genetically engineered extra-phosphorescent lichen - will infuse this superspace in an eternal dawn. Sunbathers, though, will need to call for the elevator.

It sounds far-fetched, but some in the public sector are convinced that tunnels are the urban future. Bill Vardoulis, the former mayor of Irvine, California, and its current chamber of commerce chair, is a passionate tunnel advocate. He argues that the easiest and cheapest way to lick the region's gridlock problems is to punch three holes through the mountains between Riverside and Orange counties. "People have been traveling underground for a long time," says Vardoulis. "The next step is to actually live there. It would certainly take getting used to, but to me it seems like a clear evolution. I think it's inevitable."

from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.04/suburb.html