In the beautiful city of Helsinki, Finland, there lies a hidden secret that is buried beneath the city. In order to become more sustainable, the city has decided to go underground to solve some of its big problems in an eco-friendly way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXNyEiw28D0
The City Plan
The bedrock under Finland’s capital city accommodates a vast network of more than 400 tunnels and underground structures. These include everything from utility, water and metro tunnels, to underground shopping malls, swimming pools, parking and storage facilities, leisure complexes and of course Helsinki’s famous Temppeliaukio Church.
With an increasing demand for sustainable development and sound planning of land use within the area’s red and black granite, the city of Helsinki has decided to capitalize on future construction opportunities by formulating a strategic “Underground City Plan”.
This plan is being used to manage the construction of 200 underground structures in forthcoming years, including new metro lines and an road tunnel project, which will connect existing access roads leading into the city.
The first stage of the City’s long-term strategy is to extend the pedestrian surface area in the center of the capital, by effectively removing all commercial supply traffic from the streets.
This is clearly a great way to keep Co2 emissions out of the atmosphere. Now, if we could somehow get other countries to follow Finland’s lead on underground cities, we could cut CO2 emissions tremendously.
This has to be one of the most innovative ecologically friendly city projects I have seen in a long time. Hopefully in the future they will find a way to replace the use of coal with more clean energy.
Read More: Tunnels and Tunneling
Photo Credit: 1541