# Below-grade urbanism

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2016-12-01

cbd, cities, development, financial-district, path, real-estate, shopping, toronto, uncategorized, underground-mall, underground-shopping, urbanism

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I came across [an interesting discussion on Twitter](https://twitter.com/KatiaOsokine/status/804086045063204867) last night about tunnels, bridges, elevated walkways, and Toronto’s elaborate (mostly) underground shopping complex known as the [PATH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATH_\(Toronto\)). It’s the largest of its kind in the world.

Here’s the thing: the idea of pulling people off the street and into an underground shopping mall, runs counter to what many urbanists believe is the optimal outcome.

Below is a footnote I found in a 2006 research paper by Pierre Bélanger called, [Underground landscape: The urbanism and infrastructure of Toronto’s downtown pedestrian network](https://www.daniels.utoronto.ca/sites/daniels.utoronto.ca/files/old/07_underground_landscape_0.pdf).

> _“The reluctance of urban designers and academics to engage the dynamics of the underground is stunning. For almost 50 years, urban designers, landscape architects and planners have longed for car-free pedestrian environments that are safe, secure and accessible. From a planning perspective, the Toronto underground may be the ultimate form of attrition of the automobile on the urban landscape: there are no parking lots, no asphalt, and no congestion. With its mass-transit accessibility, it is an ideal pedestrian network. This reluctance may in part be attributable to a prevailing attitude that privately-controlled underground shopping is undesirable, at best dismissible. As self-contained environments, they are perceived as lying outside the so-called public domain and that they kill off street life. As a more legitimate form of collective space, street-level activity located within municipal right-of-ways therefore receives much more advocacy.”_  

Of course, there is truth to the notion that activity gets concentrated below grade. When people visit Toronto’s Financial District for the first time, they’ll often ask: Where is the retail? And then you have to explain that it’s all underground and that we live like mole people from 9-5.

But despite this reluctance on the part of urbanists, people do seem to like it. When you’re marketing a building in the CBD, being PATH-connected is a feature, not a bug. I always joke that in the summer, I hate the PATH. But in the winter, I love it. 

There’s also a feeling of hyper-connectivity during business hours in the PATH – particularly at lunch. You have everyone leaving their desks, descending from their towers, and mixing all about in a dense pedestrian-only network. It’s unusual _not_ to run into someone you know.

So love it or hate it, perhaps we should appreciate it for what it is: thriving city life.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/below-grade-urbanism)*