SubCity: Future imaginaries of the city subsurface

A rising rate of urbanisation, coupled with climate change impacts and the necessity of low-carbon transition, will put considerable pressure on the increasingly stretched metropolitan areas.

To meet these challenges, society will need to significantly and radically enhance its use of the subsurface below the city landscape. The underground is a place that, once transformed, becomes a permanent future. For this reason, underground spatial planning requires strategically driven, comprehensive, and long-term visions.

By taking the case of Stockholm municipality as our analytical point of entry, the overall purpose of this project is twofold: 1) to develop conceptual tools and empirical insights for better understanding socio-technical dynamics of sustainable urban underground planning and use; 2) to provide practical solutions and guidance for long-term planning and envisioning sustainable use of the underground space.

The project will be guided by two interrelated objectives: 1) to investigate what currently happens in the city subsurface and identify challenges and opportunities regarding the future transition of the urban underground space; 2) to anticipate future visions of the city subsurface in terms of transportation, storage, energy, and public uses.

The project will be conducted in an interdisciplinary environment involving two programmes, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development (NRHU) and Geophysics, at the Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University.