Underground Urbanization

Cloud to Ocean

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 01:47:00 -0500

SubOptic, the organization representing the Submarine Telecommunications Industry is going live in Paris, this coming Spring 2013. From fiber optic cable manufacturers to cable network operators, the conference brings together players such as Apollo (Trans-Atlantic) to Tata Communications (Trans-Indian), the ocean and the atmosphere are justifiably the medium of urban communications and territory of transformation. There are three major sources of media information for the conference: the iterative cable map provided by Telegeography, the Submarine Cable Gazetteer published by Futures Perfect, and the comprehensive ‘Submarine Cable Almanac ‘by Submarine Telecoms Forum. Like the moon in the 1960s, the ocean has definitively become the new frontier of the 21st century.

[ Image Source: Submarine Telecom Forums 65 ]

Miniature Infrastructure

Tue, 29 May 2012 03:00:00 -0400

These tiny tunnels are ‘Underpass Studies’, 1:100 scale models made of cast concrete, created by Berliner Jens Reinert in 2008, exhibited at Plattenpalast (Germany).

5 Tunnels, 3 Tunnels 2008, Concrete, 20cm height

Subway Entrance 2003, 250 x 360 x 60 cm

Underground Garage 2004, 190 x 180 x 50 cm

Source: jens-reinert.de

*Reinert’s work - the infrastructural interiors and facade-less buildings of the tunnel and underpass models - situates itself as a crossover of the gallery work of British artist Rachel Whiteread’s interior voids and other domestic castings, with the raw, visceral work of Evol’s miniature street scenes, murals and buildings on cardboard, and box-like/block like urban equipment.

Undersea On the 40th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s...

Tue, 29 May 2012 01:53:00 -0400

Undersea On the 40th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), we celebrate her first publication, the essay “Undersea” (originally “The World of Waters”), published in The Atlantic Monthly 78 (1937) nearly three decades earlier, foretelling a longitudinal urbanization of hydrologic systems, watersheds to oceans, opening a non-anthropocentric lens on urban ecologies.

Image:”How Life Begins in the Deep Ocean”, TEDEx via The Guardian (zooplankton: heterotrophic and detritivorous organisms that are microscopic, drifting in oceans, seas, and bodies of fresh water)

Hot as Hell

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 01:43:00 -0400

Smouldering since 1962, Centralia was the industrial coal mining hotspot in the State of Pennsylvania. Wiped off the map, the town no longer has a zip code, nor a population, but it keeps burning along the Buck Mountain coal field, below ground.

Subject to mine subsidence and toxic gas emissions, the former borough was located in the epicenter of the anthracite mining region of Pennsylvania, home to the cleanest burning coal in the world. A trash dump was set on fire over 4 decades ago, accidentally igniting a coal seam below.

Geologists from the U.S. Bureau of Mines measure temperatures of the underground shaft below main street in Centralia PA, 1981 (AP Photo/Paul Vathis, File). With the fire spreading below homes and businesses, the town was evacuated and/or evicted through eminent domain resulting in a controversial and disputed shutdown of the town.

By the 1990s, All 1,100 residents left, or were evacuated, and buildings razed, through eminent domain.

Even the main highway into the city - Highway 61 between Ashland and Centralia - was shut down in 1999, and bypassed due to severe subsidence from below.

Centralia is but one of hundreds of underground coal seam fires around the globe. A new generation of scientists and researchers are developing methods for tracking underground fires, above ground emissions, and resource wastage. Dr. Jennifer Elick, Associate Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Susquehanna University and Dr. Anupma Prakash Professor, Remote Sensing Geology and Geophysics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, are some of the most notable researchers in this burning field.

Proving Ground

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:28:00 -0500

The Nevada Test Site (NTS), a former underground nuclear weapons testing area in the Nevada Desert established by President Truman in 1950, primarily in response to the imminent ban of underwater and atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific Proving Ground of the Marshall Islands in 1963. In 1996, the United Nations put an an end to all nuclear weapons detonations with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) resulting in the re-administration of the Nevada National Security Site (N2S2) by the Department of Energy.

[Geo-Coordinates: 37° 5’10.53”N 116° 2’6.50”W]

Located in the Yucca Flat, northwest of Las Vegas NV, the surface of the test areas are pockmarked with subsidence craters, resulting from the detonation of subsurface ordinances. The explosions produce underground cavities, and when they collapse, they form the actual craters, varying in depth and diameter depending on the explosive yield, depth of burial, and geology.

According to the Nevada Operations Office of the DoE, a total of 928 nuclear tests were conducted at the Nevada Proving Ground, 828 of which were underground. As a former outdoor laboratory and national experimental center, the NTS is now a military reservation that now occupies an area of about 3,500 square kilometers, making it one of the largest secured areas in the United States.

[Map of proving grounds in the Pacific and the American Southwest, in conjunction with locations of major testing laboratories across the US during the Cold War]

For a comprehensive geohistorical compilation of nuclear detonations (atmospheric, exo-atmospheric, underwater and underground), see the timeline of all 2053 nuclear explosions in the world, spanning the period of 1945 to 1998, by Japanese multimedia artist Isao Hashimoto.

(Sources: Digital Globe 2012, ctbtomedia)

Seafloor Flora

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:36:00 -0500

According to the World Seagrass Association (WSA), over a billion people live within 50 km of a seagrass meadow. The WSA’s 2012 Seagrass Calendar, and Seagrass Syllabus provides the facts about the world coverage of these underwater prairies.

"One ‘Acre of Seagrass’ can: - Absorb 2.9 kg of nutrients per year, equivalent to the treated..."

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:14:00 -0500

“One ‘Acre of Seagrass’ can: - Absorb 2.9 kg of nutrients per year, equivalent to the treated effluent from 490 people; - Sequester 3,357 kg of carbon per year, equivalent to the CO2 emissions from an automobile traveling 6,212 km; - Provide indirect ecologic services worth $18,000 annually.”

- World Seagrass Association

Subaqueous Flow Critical to fluvial processes in heavily...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:56:00 -0500

Subaqueous Flow Critical to fluvial processes in heavily urbanized estuaries is the study of sediment transport. Dr. Connell’s bedf orm experiments and time-lapse visualizations at University of Minnesota’s St. Anthony Falls Lab show the wide-ranging future of fluid dynamics and subsurface geology. The experimental stratigraphy used the Jurassic Tank at the National Center for Earth-Surface Dynamics.

Submarine Subways

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Off the coast of New Jersey, thirty MTA subway cars are being sunk off the coast of Cape May, at Shark Reef, to help create the nation’s most extensive artificial reef system.

According to the Bureau of Marine Fisheries, the USEPA, and the US Army Corps of Engineers, the deployment of artificial reefs provides good habitat for marine life and has room for a lot more. Captain Steve Nagiewicz’ underwater shots are available through NJscuba.com, with extensive information on locations and dive sites including DGPS locates.

Industrial photographer, Stephen Mallon has documented Metro Transit Authority’s (MTA) train-dumping trips up and down the Eastern Seaboard over the course of two and a half years in his show Next Stop Atlantic displaying the cost efficiencies of ocean dumping versus the high cost of landfilling and labor intensive process of disassembly.

For a comprehensive discussion of the pros and cons of the process, see Robert Hanley’s early coverage in 2003 on the deployments in his NY Times article, “Subway Cars’ Last Stop: Under Sea, Not Ground”. Hanley reports that, for New Jersey’s environmental commissioner Bradley M. Campbell:

“This is the biggest enhancement of our artificial reef system in one stroke,” he said. “This is a win for New Jersey’s fishermen, a win for the shore economy and a win for the marine environment because we’re enhancing fish habitat.”

Eventually more than 600 cars will make their way in the ocean along the Atlantic shores of New Jersey demonstrating how persistent dumping continues to be in the Garden State, with the largest number of brownfields in the US. As a measure of the flexibility of the sea’s subsurface, the creation of synthetic reefs in an otherwise inauspicious shoreline zone seems to demonstrate the ultimate form of recycling and future waste ecologies.

(Photos: Rich Galiano, Stephen Mallon)

Ballad, below grade Tuned to Cavalleria Rusticana, this ad was...

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:42:00 -0500

Ballad, below grade Tuned to Cavalleria Rusticana, this ad was produced for Metro de Madrid by special f/x expert Gabe Ibañez at Peliculas Ponder in Miami, after the train bombs in 2004 . The transit authority takes their system seriously, they have a mobile app, and an archive at Andén 0 on Line 5, the station is a museum.

Underwater Umbilical

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 04:45:09 -0500

Over 95% of international voice & data traffic is carried by submarine cables, the other 5% is transmitted by satellites. Since the first transoceanic telegraphic cable was laid across the Atlantic between Newfoundland and Ireland in 1858, the deep ocean floor has become a circuit board for submarine cabling systems and cross-continental communications.

In a digital exhibition titled ‘The Underwater Web : Cabling the Seas’, the Smithsonian compiles a complete history of undersea cable including an online version of Bern Dibner’s The Atlantic Cable (1954). Using a selection of high-resolution archival imagery, BBG has illustrated the history of transoceanic cabling with a good recap of techno-scientific developments of the past century.

Covering the first transatlantic fiber optic cable (TAT-8) in 1988 among many other developments, the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) profiles the geography of the undersea industry and the marine environment with their UNEP Report Submarine Cables and the Oceans: Connecting the World.

In “Mother Earth Mother Board”, Neal Stephenson from Wired lays out the whole genealogy of the umbilical cords of the internet, from the Silicon Valley to Thailand to Italy.

Recently, TeleGeography.com, a telecommunications research company, has made available an interactive map of the world with information about long-haul data networks and the undersea cable market. Their Submarine Cable Map depicts active and planned submarine cable systems with a minimum 5 Gbps capacity, and the nearly 1000 landing stations dotting the world’s coastlines. The Guardian shows the extent of the geography of cables that for the most part are less than 10cm in diameter at depths of sometimes less than 20 metres, carrying considerable risks for millions of users when accidents happen. The tripwire incident in 2008 by a clumsy ship near the Alexandria Seaport, off the coast of Egypt, shows just how fragile this extensive subsea system really is.

Burying Water

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:57:00 -0500

Scholar of the subterranean, urban historian, and water engineer, André Guillerme outlines the transformation of surface waters across Northern France between 1600 and 1860:

“In one century, the hydraulic network of the cities would virtually disappear, filled in or covered over; urban ecology would once again be completely changed. On the even of the French Revolution, any pretext sufficed to nullify the urban watercourses: first the moats themselves, then the use of hydraulic energy, and finally the water-related crafts.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the network, no longer functional, was, in the eyes of medecine, nothing but the breeding ground of diseases that infected the water table from which drinking water was drawn. Engineers took care of all the rest.”

Download the decisive fate of urban water systems in France with Chapter 7 “Burying of the Water Networks” from Guillerme’s 1986 book The Age of Water: The Urban Environment in the North of France A.D. 300-1800.

Pont-Neuf, during the Great Flood of 1910 (Paris Inonde, 1910)

Tunnel Trade

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 03:01:00 -0500

Bypassing the 2007 economic blockade, Gaza has re-purposed its intifada-era, gun-running tunnels for the underground smuggling of everyday essentials (fuel, food) and exclusive luxuries (chocolates, cars).

Rafah, the booming border tunnel town, is a major economic conduit capitalizing on an extensive, specialized, and dedicated network of 1500 tunnels from Gaza to Egypt, rendering the blockade a risky, but lucrative, underground business, like a lifeline. See photographer Richard Mosse go deep underground or join Abigail Hauslohner for a ground level profile of subterranean smuggling operations. But beware, as James Verini writes for the National Geographic, tunnel geographies are as much “symbols of ingenuity” and “mobility” as they are “death traps”.

Notes on the Underground Twenty years after the 1st...

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 04:49:50 -0500

Notes on the Underground Twenty years after the 1st edition, historian Rosalind Williams re-publishes her chronicle of the underground with a new foreword. From Jules Verne’s 1874 sci-fi thriller Voyage au Centre de la Terre to the modern sewer systems of the 20th century, Williams revisits its dystopic nature to cast light on the persistence of this overlooked underworld.

Server Bunker Built in a former fallout shelter, 30 metres...

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 03:59:15 -0500

Server Bunker Built in a former fallout shelter, 30 metres below ground, Swedish ISP Banhof conceived an underground data storage center in 2008. Code-named Pionen, the subterranean site in central Stockholm is powered by twin submarine engines and stores data for Julian Assange’s Wikileaks. Follow CEO Jon Karlung, photographer Jann Lipka or designer Albert France-Lonard.

Humongous Fungus Considered by micologists including Paul...

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 02:32:00 -0500

Humongous Fungus Considered by micologists including Paul Stamets to be the largest living organism on the planet, mycelium consists in a subsurface mass of fungal filaments or rhizomorphs, horizontally-spreading mats responsible for carbon breakdown, contaminant uptake and soil building processes, capable of achieving massive proportions.

Subtropolis Claiming the world’s largest underground...

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 20:08:00 -0500

Subtropolis Claiming the world’s largest underground business complex, mining giant / real estate baron Hunt Midwest manages a 1,150-acre subterranean, industrial park in Kansas City MI, at 8300 NE Underground Drive, offering nearly 5 million square feet of leasable space dedicated to transportation logistics along the CANAMEX Highway. See Steve Nadis’ profile in The Atlantic.

(Source: www.huntmidwest.com)

Saline Underground With over 200 kilometers...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:04:00 -0400

Saline Underground With over 200 kilometers of passages as well as 2,040 caverns of varying size, the Wieliczka Salt Mine houses more than 20 chambers, including a museum, cathedral, theater, spa, sanatorium and lake, reaching 135m below the earth’s surface, entirely carved out of rock salt. See the UNESCO Wo rld Heritage Site with NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory.

(Source: Kopalnia Soli Trasa Turystyczna)

"Inside an acre of living soil, there can be up to 900 lbs of earthworms, 2400 lbs of fungi, 1500..."

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:24:00 -0400

““Inside an acre of living soil, there can be up to 900 lbs of earthworms,
2400 lbs of fungi,
1500 lbs of bacteria,
133 lbs of protozoa,
890 lbs of arthropods and algae, even small mammals.”

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http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/bacteria.html