Underground Projects in Chinese New Towns. Promise and Invisibility in Three Case Studies

For the past 25 years China has known a dramatic urban growth: each year 16 million people are expected to migrate from rural to urban areas. A considerable part of the new urban population is being housed in new urban settlements, where modern infrastructural networks play a role as an integral part of the urban promise. Underground infrastructure is the solid platform on which urban objects are grafted, and its design and construction is the premise required to achieve market efficiency, making it possible to attract buyers and investors. Specific conditions have an enormous impact on the relationship between what is over and under the surface. Advanced technological set-ups allow to successfully merge the underground projects with the city on the surface, at times guaranteeing the invisibility of the former, at times allowing for its emergence as an urban element. This contribution builds on three case studies: Zhaoqing New Area (Guangdong province), Tongzhou New Town (Beijing) and Zhengdong New Town (Zhengzhou, Henan province), will exemplify the relationship between urban project and underground project and how this relationship becomes more complex depending on the number of infrastructure connections present in the underground project: the five connections in the Zhaoqing New Area illustrate infrastructure organisation in a third-tier city; the seven connections in Tongzhou reveal a more complex relationship in a new town ready to host the new Beijing Town Hall; the multiple X connections in Zhengdong are a special case, representing an integrated project in which the underground and the city are designed to function together.