An integrated planning concept for the emerging underground urbanism: Deep City Method Part 1 concept, process and application

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Highlights

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    Integrated planning process for sustainable undergroundisation.

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    Macro scale development potential appraisal (Deep City Applicability Scores).

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    City scale policy formulation for underground urbanism (case study: Geneva city).

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    Large urban scale potential zoning and development forecast (case study: Suzhou city).

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    Micro scale economic premium index assessment and building project marketability.

Abstract

Four underground resources have been seen as having a long-term potential to support sustainable urban development: underground space, groundwater, geomaterials and geothermal energy. Utilization of these resources proposes a new paradigm of economic development: underground urbanism. The new management approach named “Deep City Method” is put forward to aid decision-makers to integrate global potential of the urban underground into city-scale strategic planning. The research output will be presented in form of two papers each with a different focus. Part 1 aims to introduce the concept, process and initial application in Switzerland; Part 2 is devoted to show methodological insight for a new zoning policy in China and investment scenarios for project cost viability.

This Part 1 paper will begin by presenting the fundamental concept of the Deep City Method, followed by a proposition for a trans-institutional planning process. The application is firstly based on a rating system to identify cities having a potential for underground development. The city of Geneva is selected for conceptual application and strategic level study. Further operational steps are required in order to generalize the concept to other cities around the world.

Section snippets

Context of the emerging underground urbanism and purpose of the research

In 2007, the urban population around the world surpassed 50% of total habitants, among which nearly 20% live in metropolitan areas (urban areas with more than one million people).1 This emerging trend of rapid urbanization and concentration requires smarter solutions for adapting to growing needs of living space, construction land, water access, energy production and material provision. While decision makers are facing challenges to seek additional

Methodology: trans-institutional planning process for underground urbanism

Current development of underground space in cities is facing coordination dilemmas: on one side, public infrastructures are growing fast and going deep, congestion and disorder hinder future development (Sterling, 2005, Sterling et al., 2010); on the other side, private developers are playing a major role in property development but lack of cognition of subsurface potential and comprehensive decision-making.

The 6-step process proposed below (Fig. 2) is a facilitating procedure to frame a

Strategic benchmarking: critical success factors for urban underground governance

Intensification in metropolitan areas is one of the driving forces for underground space use in forms of infrastructures and buildings. The authors have investigated five leading cities (Montreal, Helsinki, Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam) on policy implementation of underground space planning, relating to their major development plans, policy streams and milestones, representative large underground projects, capacity building within institutions, and specific planning instruments (Table 2) (Li et al.,

Selection of pilot cities by “Deep City Applicability Score”

For the purpose of this joint research between Switzerland and China, numbers of candidate pilot cities in the two countries are examined with general criteria of geography, geology and population. Finally four representative cities in each country are selected according to their significant population size and diversity of geo-resources. The comparison by rating in this section serves to identify a particular city which deserves an imminent management of the urban underground.

The economic

Conceptual application in the city of Geneva

After a four-year research program focusing on the city of Geneva (Deep City project 2005–2009) (Blunier, 2009, Parriaux et al., 2010, Maire, 2011), a general planning process for the urban underground was formulated, based on the research outputs on geo-resources exploitation and socio-economic evaluation. Three operational steps are performed at three urban scales:

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    Urban scale: choose three districts for underground potential evaluation based on existing data.

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    Land parcel scale: compare

Conclusion

The paper has introduced an overview of the Deep City Method and it has demonstrated an integrated planning tool for underground urbanism. Two innovative principals for urbanization strategy have been introduced in the paper:

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    Resource-based management:

While the use of underground space is not a recent discovery, managing underground resources as a whole system including space, groundwater, geomaterial and geothermal energy has been ignored in the history of urbanization, this paper provides a

Acknowledgement

The work presented in this paper is supported by the Sino Swiss Science and Technology Cooperation (SSSTC:IZLCZ2123929) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (41272314).

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