Nagoya City Science Museum

Purpose of Exhibition

There are some useful urban functions in each area of cities like Nagoya.
The functions that are seldom noticed in our daily life have been made possible by many people's efforts and time.
In this exhibit, we introduce and explain such unnoticed underground facilities by using pictures and actual objects.

Additional Knowledge

[Urban Underground]
A city is a place where many more people live and commerce and industry is more developed than agriculture. If many people live there they must need many roads, railways, buildings and parks for living. They have only a few places left to use above ground, and as a result they began to use underground places.

[Public Underground Tunnel]
Public underground tunnels are tunnels for water and gas pipes, and electricity and telephone wires. It is large enough for people to come and go into and work there. Following are some advantages to putting these pipes and wires in underground tunnels, rather than on the ground.
(1) We don't have to dig up the ground to repair pipes and wires.
By only burying them in the ground, we must dig up roads, which require a lot of money for repairs. It will also cause traffic jams. Public underground tunnels are large enough to work inside.
(2) Useful for protecting disastersA telephone pole may fall down and have its wires cut when an earthquake occurs. The cut-off wire is dangerous. We can restore it more easily without digging up the ground if any other problem happens.
(3) Safety controlTelephone poles on sidewalks will be an obstacle to seeing traffic signs and lights. We can pass streets safely if they are under the ground.
(4) Neat images of the cityIt is not so attractive to see many telephone poles standing and the wires hanging down here and there. If we use public underground tunnels, we can see the sky without any ugly obstructions.
(5) Good use of underground We don't have enough space to use in the city. Therefore, we can make better use of space using underground spaces.
(6) Good economyIt takes a lot of money to provide water, sewerage, electricity and communication line construction respectively by digging. But we can have all of them at a lower cost with only one large tunnel.

Article by Tetsuro Ojio, curator