[Image: Chengfu Lu, Haidian District, Beijing (2004) by Sze Tsung Leong].
Apparently Beijing hopes “to ease congestion and other urban growing pains plaguing the city” by going underground.
“City planners have identified 17 key areas of the city for subterranean development, and envision an eventual ‘underground town‘ spanning 90 million square meters by 2020.”
This new subterranean Beijing “would quadruple the amount of underground space now being utilized in the city, which is currently at about 30 million square meters… Underground floor space [has] expanded by three million square meters in Beijing annually, [accounting] for 10 percent of the city’s total floor space completed each year” – much of which has been “devoted to parking and other traffic use.”
(Thanks, Alex P.!)
surely the morlocks will just add to the congestion?
I think they’re stationary enough that they won’t pose too much of a traffic problem.
The Japanese have shopping malls and pedestrian pathways lacing many of their larger metropolitan areas. When I lived in Nagoya in 1989, I could cross the city (image) completely underground, shopping, eating, and stopping at gaming arcades the whole way.