Underground space use with urban sustainability - Essay Example

College Underground Space Use with Urban Sustainability The growth and expansion of urban centers results in benefits and challenges to city master planners. Currently, urban cities are expanding at an alarming rate with people relocating to urban cities. This is due to the development of commercial and industrial centers, which opens up opportunities for thousands of employment seekers. As urban centers expand at an alarming late, city plans are faced with insurmountable challenges of allocating the little space available despite unlimited resource needs. Moreover, city planners are faced with a huge task of ensuring that services in urban areas are not disrupted; despite the high number of people streaming to urban centers, the quality of life in cities has to remain unchanged. Moreover, today, there is increasing advocacy on sustainable developments especially with regard to built environment. With increasing awareness on the need to preserve the environment, people are demanding stringent sustainability measures in built environment. Therefore, city planners face a daunting task of deciding the best way to come up with city master plans that ensure sustainability. An approach that has remained untapped in the development of many cities; the approach promises great opportunities for expansion of cities within sustainable limits is underground urban infrastructure development. Bobylev (2009, 1129) observed that, in order for investors to develop private housing, they require enough transport infrastructure and enough energy supply, which depends on the transport available in such cities. This calls for the need to have proper integration of urban infrastructure development and sustainable development in cities. Therefore, to ensure sustainability despite the growing of urban cities, underground urban development promises potential opportunities, if proper city master plans are prepared to highlight proper urban underground infrastructure designs. Chow et al (2) noted that the ability to maximize space in towns and urban cities would be the greatest challenge for engineers and architectures in the near future. One of the benefits of urban underground infrastructure is that it offers city planners opportunities and space to relocate infrastructure projects such as railway lines, roads, recreational facilities, stores, sports facilities among other amenities. The need for mass transportation services and modern infrastructural development requires new and innovative ways to use the available dwindling space in cities (Chow et al, 3). As a result, efficient use of underground space will ensure planners, developers, landowners and other parties have exciting and untapped opportunities to expand construction projects. Many cities have managed to save huge spaces by designing efficient underground master plans for their transport systems, which has helped not only in reducing congestion but also in maximizing utilization of space in cities. One of the best examples of the huge impacts of underground urban master plan is the London underground station, an underground facility that has managed not only to reduce traffic in the city but also has reshaped the city and utility of space to the best extent possible. The design and the emergence of the London underground station challenged the limits of engineering and city master planning across the globe. The station is an excellent benchmark of what would become of many cities in the future. Space is rapidly becoming scarce while demand for sustainability and the demand for transportation services have increased. Therefore, the London station is an excellent case of typical modernism (Wright, 2011). The tube as it is commonly known made it possible for people to travel between several stations within London at record speeds. As a result, people were no longer willing to live in the city but opted to live away from the city where they can spend a few minutes to get to London (Wright, 2011). The result was a drastic reduction of vehicle traffic congestion near the city. The station made it possible to reduce the concentration around the city. The London tube, being the avant-garde to the future, motivated city planners to use ground space for planning other infrastructural designs without the need to consider the city rail transport system. Moreover, trains are essential in transporting large numbers of people, which made it unnecessary to use vehicles, leading to a reduction in traffic congestion, and lower noise pollution. Efficient land use and improvement is one of the major benefits of using underground urban master plans for infrastructural development. Fig London Underground map With increased demand for commercial space in urban centers, master planners in cities have to design a way of meeting the high demand from investors. A good example of this need has been met with underground development and master planning in Ha’erbin city, in China. The city has over 33, 100,000 square feet of underground development with sixteen buildings of different uses constructed in an area of 3,200,000 square feet (Zhang 16). Ha’erbin city has a rich network of underground parks, city plazas and subway development, a milestone that steered the growth of the city to great heights. In other words, investors do not have to be limited by space, but city master planning has to find ways of accommodating as many investments as possible while ensuring sustainability of the projects. The use of underground development in Ha’erbin is atypical case that offers people more space for commercial and recreational use, accommodate more people within a city while at the same time ensuring the city meets sustainable standards and leaving open spaces to improve visibility and decongest the city. Underground master plans, therefore, have great potential that city planners have an obligation to use towards dealing with the challenges of rapidly growing cities. Underground land development does not only offer more space for development but makes life much easier and reduces congestion significantly. Paul (40) explained of a massive underground car park that was initiated in Paris with a target of 50,000 new car parks per year for the next 10 years form 2002. New York, Los Angeles as Paul observed are other cities that take advantage of underground car parks with Boston having a car garage of 1362 car spaces underground. The effect of these underground car parks is that they reduce congestion along streets making movement and visibility much easier; people have the advantage of living in decongested cities. In some instances, as Paul observed, recreational facilities and green spaces are developed on top of such underground car parks or commercial buildings. The use of such grounds to develop greens spaces ensures sustainability in development and reduces pollution to great lengths. The risk of diseases triggered by vehicle emissions is thus reduced significantly especially to pedestrians walking along the streets. Bobylev (2009, 1129) observed that transport and utilities make the most common usage of underground facilities in urban infrastructure. Transport utilities include railways, road tunnels and stations while some of the common utilities include sewage, cable networks and pipelines in connecting major installations in cities. Utilities in most cities make the biggest percentage of underground urban infrastructure. For instance, Bobylev (2009, 1129) noted that, in Stockholm, 41% of all infrastructures was comprised of utilities, an indication of the severe climate in the country and the need to supply heating infrastructure. On the contrary, Japan has a partly 8% utilities in Tokyo, which indicates the lack of important infrastructure such as heating pipes in the country. However, Tokyo compared to other major cities has one of the highest road and rail transportation network at 55%. Consequently, in Tokyo, the major part of underground urban development is in rail tunnels and road tunnels. Tokyo has a public transport rate of 56.7% compared to 24.1% in Paris (Bobylev 2009, 1129). These figures indicate the varying needs of urban underground infrastructure across the world. Cities with huge transportation demands can only have an option of developing such transportation network as an underground infrastructure for better planning and sustainability in such cities. Tokyo is a good example of such cities. On the other hand, cities such as Stockholm that do not have heavy traffic demands have to considered planning underground infrastructure master plans for utilities only. However, as Bobylev observed, there is a risk of underground development exhaustion into the future leaving cities with no other possibilities of developing such infrastructure. This is because; underground infrastructure in transport and utilities have different demands and size allocation. Exhausting possible development of underground infrastructure poses great challenges to cities such as Tokyo or London, which have invested heavily in underground transportation networks. Li (889) explained that building underground infrastructure may be as a result of several challenges across urban areas. Land use pressure is one of the major factors that have made city master plans to incorporate underground infrastructure. Considering that facilities such as stations are large and require extensive space use, a scarce resource around cities, exploiting available underground for construction of such projects would release more space for public use. This will enhance sustainability as well as providing the public with better living conditions around major cities. Li (890) observed that the rate of development of underground structures is directly related to urban population in cities. For instance as Bobylev observed, Stockholm has a lower population density compared to Tokyo while Paris has the highest population density among the three cities, calculated by the number of people inhabiting a square kilometer area. Consequently, it would be expected that Paris has the highest number of underground development compared to the two cities if sustainability in infrastructural development has to be achieved. Another factor that has been driving underground development besides achieving sustainability in development is increasing land prices in many cities. APART part from considering the sustainability of developments, there is a trend for properties within cities to skyrocket with real estate development taking all available space. To achieve cost sustainability, master planners seek to move public facilities underground to reduce the land cost involved, a phenomenon that has been in use in Japan (Tannaka et al, 293). The reduction in noise pollution, exhaust from vehicles and prevention of localized heating in congested cities is possible with underground infrastructure development, makes underground development of infrastructure environmentally sustainable and the only possible way for cities to consider sustainability into the future. Underground development has been the best mode of development especially for vital installations. According to the US critical infrastructures Protection act of 2001, critical infrastructure is defined as, “assets and systems, physical or virtual, critical for a country that any case of incapacitation of the facility of destruction of the facility and assets would have grave consequences to the safety of the public, their health or the combination of the two aspects.” (Bobylev 2007, 445) Therefore, vital underground infrastructure is vital to the society. Any slight damage to these is not only disastrous, and health threatening but may also have dangerous repercussions that threaten life. To protect the public against such risky infrastructure, underground master plans in urban cities is the only way through which the public can be insulated against such dangers. In addition to ensuring sustainability in urban cities, underground master plans ensures critical infrastructure within the city operate in the best way possible without posing any threat to people. Urban underground infrastructure is the only potential way through which city planners may provide services to the public in the future while at the same time ensuring sustainable development. Infrastructure such as transport and utilities require extensive spaces that are not available in modern cities. Consequently, cities such as London, Tokyo, Paris, and Los Angeles among others have underscored the necessity of harnessing underground space in relocating infrastructure that requires such extensive spaces underground. The effect is sustainability as underground infrastructure offers an alternative for developers not to tamper with the natural environment. Moreover, open spaces increase visibility, air circulation and integration of green spaces within cities; these are the best ways to maintain sustainability. Therefore, as cities continue to expand with an alarming rate and land becomes scarce within cities, city planners have to consider establishing underground development master plans. This will facilitate an increase in commercial, industrial and residential facility development while at the same time observing environmental sustainability. Consequently, developing of urban city master plans has to be shifted towards planning for underground space development in all cities across the globe. Work Cited Bobylev, Nikolai. Mainstreaming sustainable development into a city’s Master plan: A case of Urban Underground Space use. Land Use Policy 26 (2009)1128–1137 Bobylev, Nikolai. Sustainability and Vulnerability Analysis of Critical Underground Infrastructure. Managing Critical Infrastructure Risks (2007) 445-469. Li, Huanqing. The Way to Plan a Sustainable “Deep City”: From Economic and Strategic Aspects. Proceedings REAL CORP 2012 Tagungsband. 14-16 May 2012, Schwechat, pg.889 898 Nishioka, S., Y. Tannaka, et al. Deep Underground Usage for Effective Executing of City Facility Construction. 11th ACUUS Conference: ?Underground Space: Expanding the Frontiers?, Athens - Greece. 2007. Paul, Tim. Hidden aspects of urban planning, Surface and underground development. London: Thomas Telford, 2002. Wright, Peter. Assessment and Monitoring of London Underground Tunnels. Monico Workshop – 18 March 2011, Athens. http://www.monicoeu.org/documents/Workshop/13.%20Wright%20%20Assessment%20and%20Monitoring%20of%20London%20Underground%20Tunnels.pdf 1st Dec. 2013. Zhang, Hejun. Space to decrease urban sprawl: A case study of Chicago. 2011. http://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/bitstream/123456789/197021/1/ZhangH_2012-1_BODY.pdf 1st Dec. 2013 Read More