The Natural Philosopher wrote:

The more I look at the average urban and suburban sprawl the more I feel
that actually what we should be doing is putting the roads deep down,
the houses just under the surface with light pipes and the gardens and
parks on top...Hobbiton? possibly :-)

What do you think are the pros and cons of this from a cost/benefit
environmental and general living feeling?


This has been suggested as an approach to dealing with much higher
population levels in future. You can have much higher density housing
below the surface yet retain a green countryside appearance above. You
can have fields orchards and houses occupying the same space. If on
todays housing estates houses occupy 1/3 or 1/4 the area, undergruond
they could occupy almost 100%, tripling or quadrupling density.

The biggest problem is cost. Building a house underground requires a
far stronger structure than one on the ground. There are also
additional costs such as soundproofing for houses under roads,
drainage, fire escapes, climate control, etc.

The requirement for window area also means that above ground wont be
clutter free, and cant be used like a ploughed field. It can however be
used for some growing applications.

The inability to look out the window is very undesirable to most
people, though periscope windows are a possibility.

Tunnels are vastly more expensive than surface roads, and having roads
on the surface with houses underground would support far more
population than all on top as now. In the distant future, as populatoin
rises even more, roads underground might become desirable too. Such
roadways could be on a different level than the housing, so one could
have separate fully packed layers of roads, housing, factories, and
basic services.

Lets say (havent checked figures now, just ballparking) that 5% of
British land is built on, and out of that the house occupies 33% of
that land. Converting to underground housing on 2 storeys would then
give us an increase in total housing area of around 60 times the
present house area.

Nearly everything comes down to cost in the end, and the cost of doing
this today on a mass scale is prohibitive. Its also not well enough
accepted to support good sale prices for such properties. It also
brings more disadvantage than advantage in reality, though when
populations are 50x as large it may be the other way round.


NT