Underground living

However, underground living does have certain disadvantages, such as the potential for flooding, which in some cases may require special pumping systems to be installed.

It is the preferred mode of housing to communities in such extreme environments as Italy's Sassi di Matera, Australia's Coober Pedy, Berber caves as those in Matmata, Tunisia, and even Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station.

[1] In the final stage of World War II, the Nazis relocated entire armaments factories underground, as the Allies' air supremacy made surface structures vulnerable to daylight strategic bombing raids.

[7] Historically planning of subsurface facilities has been subject to an ad-hoc development approach by separate sectors and disciplines.

The majority of the early short science-fiction story "The Machine Stops" by British author E.M. Forster is set in an imagined underground city.