Building For The Future

As overpopulation and climate change take their toll on our cities, engineers and urban planners are adapting their designs to cope with an uncertain future

- Abigail Beall

GOING UNDERGROUND

To cope with surging populations, city planners are starting to look beneath their feet for space

SINGAPORE

As the world’s population continues to rise, space is becoming scarcer, and cities are looking for new places to host their residents. For Singapore – the world’s third most densely populated country and home to nearly six million people – the answer is to head downwards.

Climate change and rising sea levels mean that reclaiming land is no longer a sustainable option for Singapore. Instead, the country is looking to create an underground city. Earlier this year, Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority published its draft master plan, setting out what the next 15 years are going to look like. So far, the equivalent of £10.7m has been invested in the research and development of underground tech. Laws have been changed regarding home ownership, so people only own the land as far down as their basement, to free up space beneath houses for development.

People won’t be living underground at first, the authority says. Instead, the city will start by moving storage, utilities, transport and industrial facilities underground, freeing up space above ground for residential and commercial uses.

Currently, Singapore uses underground spaces for transport and cooling systems, which go down to 20m. A deep tunnel sewage system for transporting waste water and sewage is planned for 20m to 50m. “For deeper space of more than 100m, more heavy-duty functions such as ammunition storage and caverns for petrochemical storage could be created,” says Sing Tien Foo, director of the Institute of Real Estate Studies at the National University of Singapore. One major planned development is the Jurong Rock Caverns, which can hold about 1.5 million cubic metres of crude oil and petroleum.