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st Century: New Infrastructure with Modal Shift Technology and Geotechnology
Published in T. Adachi, K. Tateyama, M. Kimura, Modern Tunneling Science and Technology, 2017
Underground Shopping Malls have been constructed in many parts of the world in the 20th century. Forum Des Halles in Paris, Eton Center in Toronto, Place Ville-Marie in Montreal, the Gallery in Philadelphia and Queen’s Square in Yokohama are some typical examples among them. These shopping malls have good connections to subways or intercity railways, car parks in underground, nearby other shopping malls with convenient walkways, convenient passages to nearby buildings for office workers. Take Montreal underground network for instance, it is called as “The underground city of Montreal”. The main part of this underground city is the pedestrian network, which is accessible from subway stations, streets, via lobbies of the nearby buildings and their basements. This creates the large underground environment of indoor city that spread 30 kilometers of corridors, squares and commercial malls. Queen’s Square Yokohama is a newly built terminal, shopping and office complex which uses underground and aboveground space at the same time and create a three dimensional urban human space. The atrium space will connect to the underground railway system directly in a few years. When the subway line is completed, it will house the huge atrium of 45m in height, which penetrate through 5th floor aboveground level to the 5th floor underground subway line level. Subway trains and station can be seen from the 5th floor aboveground level, and oppositely subway passengers can look up at the large atrium from the train or the platform. Subway level is approximately 30m below surface. The atrium is designed to be one body by connecting subway, underground shopping area and aboveground shopping mall. Forum Des Halles is another fine example, which creates huge underground building-complex of sunken garden type and conveniently connects to the subways and commuter railways under the buildings. The underground complex houses, not only shopping malls, but also museum, theater and swimming pool and others. It is a gigantic underground commercial and cultural complex.
Managing infrastructure resilience and adaptation
Published in Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 2023
Chris Lewin, Monica Rossi, Evangelia Soultani, Kumar Sudheer Raj
An international resilience problem which might become increasingly common and worrying is the possibility of prolonged heatwaves at very extreme temperatures, perhaps beyond any which have occurred so far in any country. Such heatwaves could cause deaths or serious health problems for staff and users of buildings and infrastructure, which may mean that they can only be used for part of the year or only at night. It may therefore be worth thinking seriously about building some buildings and structures underground, even though the expense may far exceed the costs of construction on the surface. As an example, Montreal has a city which is partially underground, stretching for 1½ square miles (Wikipedia, Underground City, Montreal). Another option is to insulate the roofs of new and existing buildings to a far higher standard than at present may appear worthwhile, to keep properties cooler. Greater resilience could also be provided at a national level by investing in fire engines, water pumps and water-carrying aeroplanes which could be moved around the country easily.