The Central Urban Work Conference was held in Beijing from July 14 to 15. The meeting emphasized the goal of building a modern people's city that is innovative, livable, beautiful, resilient, civilized, and smart, while outlining seven key tasks for urban development. Regarding this central urban conference, the China Society for Urban Studies specially invited experts and scholars to deeply understand and reflect on its content, jointly exploring new approaches for urban modernization with Chinese characteristics.
Authors
Zhao Yi Secretary general of Underground Space Planning Branch, China Urban Planning Society; Deputy General Manager of Jiangsu Planning and Design Group; Senior urban planner at researcher level
Yuan Xinguo He is a deputy chief planner of Jiangsu Provincial Planning and Design Group, a senior planner of Jiangsu Provincial Urban Planning and Design Institute, and a standing director of Jiangsu Underground Space Society
The Central Urban Work Conference held in mid-July 2025 proposed the goal of building a "modern people's city" characterized by innovation, livability, beauty, resilience, civilization, and smart technology, charting the course for urban development and planning in the new era. Underground space serves as a vital strategic resource for advancing innovative, livable, beautiful, resilient, civilized, and smart cities. Exploring new applications of underground space is a crucial approach to energize its potential, empower the construction of these six key urban dimensions, and facilitate the realization of a modern people's city.
1.Underground power drives innovation: Deep earth laboratory becomes a new engine of innovation
As the cornerstone of national core competitiveness, technological innovation capabilities have become a decisive force in global strategic competition to secure developmental initiative and serve as a critical pathway for enhancing comprehensive national strength. The construction of cutting-edge laboratories utilizing the unique physical environment of deep underground spaces demonstrates immense strategic value. Underground environments naturally possess extremely low cosmic radiation background, ultra-stable temperature-humidity conditions, and exceptional seismic isolation and soundproofing properties, providing "extreme experimental grounds" for breakthrough research. This enables scientists to conduct high-precision exploration and extreme condition studies under ground conditions that are unattainable on Earth, facilitating the resolution of major fundamental scientific challenges. Such efforts foster internationally influential original discoveries and core technological breakthroughs, enhance the nation's original innovation capabilities, and provide a core technological engine for future industrial transformation.
2.Underground fabric is livable: a new dimension of convenient travel and comfortable life
As a valuable three-dimensional resource, underground space has effectively alleviated urban traffic congestion, parking difficulties, incomplete facilities, and low environmental quality. However, compared to the requirements of a "modern people's city", urban construction challenges persist: dense student and parent crowds during school drop-off periods at primary and secondary school gates, insufficient development of public service facilities' underground spaces leading to parking shortages and slow traffic relief, and ground-level facilities with "not-in-my-backyard" effects negatively impacting residents' daily lives and mental well-being. Therefore, we should actively innovate new applications for underground space utilization. While addressing these local issues, this approach can also create more valuable green spaces and recreational areas for residents. For instance, rational use of campus and surrounding underground spaces could establish efficient underground transportation systems that alleviate surface traffic congestion, ensure safe and efficient student pick-up/drop-off processes, and enhance the convenience of home-school interactions.
3.The beauty hidden beneath the city walls: invisible facilities create a new realm of landscape
China's vast territory features significant climatic variations: the north experiences extreme cold, while the south is humid and hot, with the west being arid. Coupled with high-density urban development and intensive construction activities, the "Beautiful City" initiative requires localized strategies tailored to specific conditions. Underground spaces, endowed with inherent physical isolation properties, offer unique advantages for creating stable micro-environments. By leveraging advanced technologies like light-guiding systems, vertical greening, and controlled temperature/humidity environments, these underground areas transcend surface environmental constraints to transform into comfortable, eco-friendly, and vibrant public spaces. Whether it's underground commercial streets, sunken courtyards, or public nodes in transportation hubs, all can become all-weather friendly venues for citizens' daily interactions and recreational activities.
4.Building underground lifelines: disaster prevention space and resilience support new base
Confronting increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events, earthquakes, public health crises, and other potential risks, underground spaces offer unique advantages in building multi-layered, resilient urban protection systems. Through forward-looking integrated planning and highly coordinated construction, core urban functions are deeply embedded into the underground space network. Key scenarios include: Energy Regulation Centers (underground substations, geothermal facilities, energy storage centers) ensuring stable energy supply and distribution under extreme conditions; Water Resource Management Nodes (underground reservoirs, rainwater retention ponds, reclaimed water treatment plants) enhancing flood control, drought resistance, and water recycling capabilities; Lifeline Protection Fortresses (comprehensive utility tunnels, core communication hubs) guaranteeing safe and uninterrupted operation of urban "arteries" like power grids, communications, and water supply systems during disasters; Strategic Emergency Reserve Spaces (material warehouses, backup command centers, emergency shelters) providing robust support for rapid response and recovery. Underground spaces establish a powerful resilient foundation that integrates peacetime and disaster response, features complementary multifunctional systems, and offers three-dimensional protection.
5.Deepen the symphony of ancient and modern times: underground characteristics and a new hall of public culture
The innovative transformation of abandoned mines, air-raid shelters, natural karst caves, and deep underground spaces into cultural, artistic, recreational, and commercial hubs is emerging as a pioneering practice in empowering civilized city development. These dormant subterranean realms, with their unique spatial ambiance---profound, serene, enigmatic, or steeped in historical significance-offer an ideal stage for immersive experiences. Underground-themed museums, avant-garde art galleries, music halls, themed restaurants, and adventure parks not only revitalize idle historical relics and underground resources but also create cultural tourism attractions and new urban landmarks, significantly enhancing cities' appeal and competitiveness.
6.Building smart nerves: a new hub for digital infrastructure and intelligent control
With the deepening advancement of smart city construction, data centers supporting intelligent transportation are expanding at an astonishing rate. Research indicates that the global data center industry already consumes 3% of worldwide electricity. "Beneath the Ground and Under the Sea" has become a crucial approach for data centers to reduce energy consumption and ensure safety. The deeper value of underground spaces in smart city development lies in their embedded "intelligent lifelines" that sustain urban efficiency. These systems integrate real-time sensors and smart management platforms with various underground transportation, municipal, and security infrastructure, enabling remote monitoring, automatic alerts, precise positioning, and rapid repairs. This significantly enhances the "sensitivity" and "intelligence" of urban infrastructure.
Summary
To build a modern urban city, we must continuously expand and deepen innovative applications of underground space. The key to this lies not only in overcoming technical bottlenecks that support these scenarios, but also in aligning land use and planning policies. More importantly, we need to pioneer innovative governance models for underground spaces while strengthening cross-sector collaboration. Ultimately, this will transform underground space from the "substance" of cities into their "face" -a transformation that elevates urban infrastructure beyond mere functionality to become an integral part of the city's identity.
Source：<https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/PTOA4wPS8DpGZrSCenmRoA>
Translated & Edited by Jin He
Copyright @ 2014 Urban Planning Society of China
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