The below and the above

Over the spring and the coming summer I am going to begin discussing the veins and arteries of our cities that we don't really get to see or experience for ourselves. My memories take me back to when I was a little younger. Sitting on the roof of our house ( do not ask how I got there, apparently you can squeeze out of a window but just try squeezing back in when your 7 years old) and seeing the 'world' in a different light. Long before I was aware of le Corbusiers streets in the sky or team 10's fascination with high rise living and well before Stephen Holls linked hybrid, that 7 year old one summer realised for himself the elevated feeling of being high up of the ground and it was as simple as stepping out.

I also remember my first visit to Rome where I was taken on a tour of the cities ancient network of sewers and mines. It's a different world down there. Different from the world above.

I recently read an article in the National Geographic about the Paris underground. A network of ancient tunnels, catacombs and mines that the city almost 20 feet below the surface. It took me back that tour of Rome and how apparently 'all are equal' beneath the city, all are muddied, all are wet and dripping with excitement. Here is an extract from that article written by By Neil Shea, Photograph by Stephen Alvarez;

The cab glides through Saturday morning. The great avenues are quiet, the shops closed. From a bakery comes the scent of fresh bread. At a stoplight a blur of movement draws my attention. A man in blue coveralls is emerging from a hole in the sidewalk. His hair falls in dreadlocks, and there is a lamp on his head. Now a young woman emerges, holding a lantern. She has long, slender legs and wears very short shorts. Both wear rubber boots, both are smeared with beige mud, like a tribal decoration. The man shoves the iron cover back over the hole and takes the woman's hand, and together they run grinning down the street.

Paris has a deeper and stranger connection to its underground than almost any city, and that underground is one of the richest. The arteries and intestines of Paris, the hundreds of miles of tunnels that make up some of the oldest and densest subway and sewer networks in the world, are just the start of it. Under Paris there are spaces of all kinds: canals and reservoirs, crypts and bank vaults, wine cellars transformed into nightclubs and galleries. Most surprising of all are the carrières—the old limestone quarries that fan out in a deep and intricate web under many neighborhoods, mostly in the southern part of the metropolis.