Global Undergrounds: Exploring Cities Within

Product Description

As the world rapidly urbanizes, its cities sink themselves into the ground in sprawling tendons of tunnels
- conduits for transport, utility, communication, shelter & storage. The excavation of these spaces, at ever-increasing depths & speed, has changed our lives in ways that we tend to take for granted. For the first time, this book charts the global reach of urban underground spaces, bringing together a collection of 80 stories of subterranean sites around the world. The book draws out the extraordinary range of meanings suggested by urban underground spaces, whether their power as places of hope, fear, memory, labour & resistance, or their capacity to evoke both long histories & futures in the making. Illustrated with often breathtaking photographs, Global Undergrounds creates a new sense of the richness & global diversity of urban underground spaces. Its breadth & depth will appeal to all those who are engaged with these spaces: from urban planners, geographers, architects & engineers to urban explorers, photographers & anyone who encounters underground spaces in their cities. Indeed we inhabit a world where the material stuff beneath our feet is constantly in flux, where layer upon layer of things, people & substances circulate, dream & dwell.