Underground: The next urban frontier – Dream City – Salon.com

Underground development, done the right way, could be a perfect fit for this new mode of thinking. Historically, developers have spent a lot of time trying to make underground spaces feel like they’re not underground. But the weirdness of an underground park is exactly why we like it. It’s intriguing and strange and a little bit spooky. “The underground can be claustrophobic, but it can also be this cozy, Fantastic Mr. Fox layer of reality,” says Barasch. So, rather than turn underground spaces into sterile retail or prefab food courts, ablaze with primary colors and piped-in pop music, developers could instead embrace the natural state of these spaces — their “undergroundness” — when designing for them. This doesn’t mean making them cheerless, it simply means respecting their subterranean identity, much like the High Line kept in place some of the former railroad’s industrial decay.

via Underground: The next urban frontier – Dream City – Salon.com.