The first time I went to Montreal it was -25C before wind chill and snowing. I was wandering the streets downtown and freezing my ass off. I would see (in any direction) maybe one person every 3 city blocks or so. It was very eerie. Eventually I was too damned cold and ducked into a building. A woman passed me wearing summer-wear, short shorts and a light loose shirt. And then some more people - all dressed like it was hot outside. And then I found the interior urbanism that connected the city, that's why nobody was above ground except hypothermic tourists like me. I spent the rest of the day just wandering around the vast labyrinth, fascinated by the underground world of it all.

I was working in downtown Chicago at the Hyatt regency (center of the pedway) doing some renovations to it during the height of covid and I got lost in the building and eventually I realized I wasn't even in the hyatt anymore so then my goal just became "find the surface streets" which then turned into "find another human" since everything was shut down from covid. I eventually found a random Dunkin donuts in the basement of another hotel that was OPEN. not a soul in the entire pedway aside from me and this dude selling donuts.

I know I am among a very small amount of people with this opinion, but I have always found Chicago's Pedway to be exciting, new, and mysterious. It kind of feels like I'm a kid playing hide-and-seek in a big stranger's house. Other than the lack of directions (maybe adopt the street names from above ground) I think they've really got something going there. Thank you for the great videos.

as a guy from a small town in France who hasn't ever been inside a building larger than a shopping mall and never stepped into a skyscraper once in my life the concept of interior urbanism is absolutely surreal for me, look straight out of a sci-fi movie tbh I would love experiencing living in a place like that at least once in my life

The design of indoor cities is particularly interesting because space colonies will presumably be indoors. Future space colony architects will probably use similar techniques.

The most city like structure I've ever experienced was a cruise ship. Those are so absolutely massive, yet quite easy to navigate through after just a couple of days

I remember being so impressed with Montreal’s indoor city design - due to the harsh winters it had developed so that between connected buildings, shopping corridors, large indoor plazas with multi-story headspace, walkways huge and small, so that you can walk for blocks indoors in the downtown area. It does have kind of a mix and match, maze-like feeling, but the lack of uniform look helps with finding your way around.

Kowloon Walled City, which while no longer exists, I think is the greatest example of a contingent and 'natural' growth of a building complex, with more buildings and floors being added to the limited space as needed, fitting into the gaps and spaces that already exist. While it has been torn down, the pictures that exist of it are fascinating to look at, a true jungle of instinctive architecture, built only for function, not for aesthetics.

A good example would be airports, where you sometimes take a 5 minute train ride to get from one end to another. Or, if you're laid over and have energy to spare, you can walk for an hour or two without ever retracing your steps. And they're big mostly just because they need to be to facilitate enough loading/unloading areas and the support infrastructure necessary to staff them.

This is how I felt when I spent time in Osaka, Japan. Their underground subway stations are pretty tunnels of shops and restaurants. I remember walking from one train station to another without ever having to leave the underground.

I don't think anywhere can top the interior architecture of Tokyo. There are fully interconnected and overlapping above-ground train and subway networks, and most of the stations support some interior architecture. The train stations are more liminal, with some station exits dropping the user at street level; but many stations merge directly with department stores, offices, and shopping promenades. And of course, since the surface trains and subways are themselves linked, many connection hubs have verticality from skyscraping station buildings down to subterranean mazes. In your video, you seem to discuss the train linkage on the Chicago Pedway as an appendage. In Tokyo, the transit systems integrate each individual interior space into an organically linked and unimaginably massive whole. The combined surface/subway complex of Shinjuku Station alone handles upwards of 3.5 million users a day, many of whom enter or exit through other adjacent interior spaces. And the scale gets even larger if you imagine the transit system as it links one conurbation to another. You can exit your hotel room at a major Tokyo hotel, go through the lavish interior to the subterranean promenade, walk past shops and workspaces to the subterranean train station entrance, take a subway to one of several inter-city transit hub stations, enter the bullet train network to any of the other major cities, reverse the process several hundred miles away and get to your next high-rise hotel room -- all without ever leaving air conditioning.

The PATH in Toronto is probably one of the largest and most successful indoor pathways that has been organically developed in Toronto. It includes both large spaces designed and built vertically ( A massive mall) as well as atriums (Atrium on Bay). Connection to a university, hotels, parking lots, banks but most importantly connection to a bus / train and 4 subway stations and hundreds of office towers and dozens of residential buildings.

I dig the "natural grown" Indoor Cities, less sterile and seems more fun to explore. They tell a story, you did it yourself with these construction pillars and how it all winds around existing infrastructure. I also imagine it would be easier to navigate, not harder, since different areas are more distinct.

Taking in the historical context, I’d look at the medieval monastery with it’s cloisters connecting the chapel, dining hall and dormitories. Taking it back a bit further, the castle bailey encloses the core buildings needed for survival, but doesn’t usually go as far as protecting the inhabitants with a roof.

I love that you included the Hyatt Regency - I've only ever been there when it's hosting conventions of like-minded people hanging out together over a common interest. It's an already incredibly unique space that feels like it's being used to it's fullest when these several 1000 people co-habitate for a weekend together. The space takes on more of the feel of an interstellar luxury cruiseliner than a cold and foreboding hotel.

I went to Minneapolis this summer to explore downtown for the first time. I spent a whole day just discovering it via the skyway & sidewalks. I've been there many times for events, valley fair, MOA, etc, but had never really spent much time downtown. It was amazing to me being from small town ND. I can't imagine how comfy it must be in winter.

Hong Kong is interiorized urbanism on steroids. Frampton/Wong/Solomon's Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook provides a fascinating mapping just how vast these uncoordinated growths have become over the decades.

The student union at the university I went to would definitely fit into interior urbanism. It had restaurants, two concert halls, a bunch of conference rooms with flexible sizes, a gift shop, a bookshop/school supplies store, and soooo much space for people to study, eat, or just lounge around. I once even took a nap there lol. Some days I was there from early morning until well past midnight.

I live in South Korea and they definitely have a lot of places like the pedway. The subway system in some places will inflate to be an entire underground city. They refer to them as underground malls. I'm someone who grew up in a town with non of that so it's a new and exciting thing to experience now. But sometimes you go a whole day without stepping outside and that can really mess with your head.

The first city that came to mind regarding interior urbanism was Montreal - and my it suffered from the negatives of interior urbanism but considering the temperatures - having students consumers and employers able to avoid the harsh conditions and access the subway or Amtrak from the warm underground is also a massive kindness offered to those same people.

A great international example can be found in Singapore. No city is more dedicated to its malls than Sings. Like Minneapolis, much of this interiority is dictated by the weather. Singapore is 80 degrees and 80% humidity pretty much 365 days a year so interior space is important. They are very intentional about making it completely accessible to the public but there are signifiers of which public these spaces are actually looking to court. Would a Bengali construction worker really feel comfortable or inconspicuous in one of the super high end malls in the Orchard area? Moreover, the sheer consumerism of these spaces is also troubling. There's also little coordination between malls, so you still have to pop out onto the streets to reach another destination. Nonetheless, the mall culture is fascinating. There were times where I would get drinks in one mall, go to dinner in another and then go to a club in a third mall. The vertical interior elitism that you allude to with Portman's architecture reminds me of Dubai, which is in many ways the mirror opposite of Singapore. It also expanded in a very short time period and also exists in nearly year-round oppressive heat, but its approach to the public is quite different. Buildings there are super reflective, highly secured and each one is its own fortress of elitism. They are meant to be accessible only to those who are truly meant to use the interior space and no one else. Many of the buildings are meant to store everything one could need in one place so that the city feels relatively inconsequential to the building's value. To me, the most important foundation of good urbanism is public/private interface. The more a private space interacts with the street, the more dynamic both of those spaces will be, the more they will pick up on their best attributes and reflect those in each other. Think restaurants with their music and seating spilling out into the sidewalk, plants hanging outside of a florist on the scaffolding of a renovated building, that sort of thing. Or conversely, graffiti art adorning the walls of a cool cafe, or a bookstore allowing people to just sit and soak up the AC and atmosphere. This is where life and culture percolate. Delineating those differences between exterior/interior make a city static and divided.

Nothing is spookier than giant building, with hundreds of seating arrangements and dozens of shops, that is almost empty. Such as malls or airports at the start of the pandemic when everyone sheltered in place.

I've worked and lived in 2 Hotels in Australia with John Portman style interiors, I loved these spaces they were much lusher with a lot of greenery much like an atrium and had the glass lift and walkways...truly beautiful spaces

I went to montréal a couple months ago and it felt like no one else was there- the streets were pretty much fully empty, with like only a dozen people possibly in view at once- turns out its because of the underground city/Desjardins. Very weird and surreal to be down there and see a ton of people for one of the first times.

Surprised you didn't mention airports and you barely mentioned malls. My mind went straight to those. There's also that mall in Las Vegas with the fake sky ceiling, and, I think Toronto has quite a big "pedway" type thing doesn't it? I found your comments about the incoherence of the pedway vs the coherence of the Portman spaces interesting. You seemed to be saying that the incoherence of the pedway was a negative thing, but when we talk about cities and normal streets, I often hear people talk about the unplanned streets of Europe and how they are "interesting" and full of "variety" vs the "boring" and "faceless" big box stores of the post war era. Seems almost like a contradiction, or that somehow uniformity is desirable inside, but undesirable outside.

To me, most architects seem to strive for "clean", which to me usually translates to "sterile and inhuman". For comparison, I own a house that's very old and has grown over the centuries. The result is a house that, while technically only two stories tall, has around 5 different levels, with nooks and crannies and an overall sense of "untidiness" - but also a very strong sense of personality. You can tell where the big bathroom was once a pig sty, where the barn was converted into living space and a garage, you see some exterior walls that suddenly became inside walls at some point. That, to me, is a home. In contrast, the apartment I currently live in is new, cold, utilitarian. It's not a home. It's a house, a place that's indifferent. The same holds true for larger structures, "indoor cities". There is one near me that's literally built to resemble a town - indoors, under a roof. It's pleasant, it meanders, it has a few stairs (and ramps) here and there, it just feels comfortable. Compare that to the mall just down the street which is a cold, unpleasant, unwelcoming place. Yes it has indoor plants and seating areas, but it's all completely uniform, boring and industrial. You go in, you get what you want, and you very much get out fast, because the building itself doesn't seem to WANT people with its brutalist, cold concrete everywhere. That Facebook office for example looks like a nightmarish place to work in, let alone to be in. It represents the very american notion of "worker bees", stuck in a horrible space with no privacy, no personal touches. No wonder people don't want to be in the office, if the office looks like a nightmare from a dystopian future.

My recollection on this subject is about 40 years old but I seem to recall that MIT had a pretty vast underground network of corridors that connected many of its campus buildings and formed a kind-of underground pedway. This is unusual for academic institutions and reminded me of a vast industrial complex. One of my biggest problems with many of the Portman hotels is that much of the time you are basically looking at endless arrays of blank hotel room doors. The building "message" makes me think of visiting someone's home, entering through a grand and elaborate entry and foyer...and then your host greets you wearing a tee-shirt, shorts and a bathrobe. The unrelenting uniformity is surreal. BTW...if you watch the movie "Interstellar" carefully you will see that Portman's Bonaventure Hotel in downtown LA was used for the rocket launch silo...heavily camouflaged with launch-pad-ish paraphernalia.

Montreal and Minneapolis are great examples of this. Montreal's system is built around their Metro. Minneapolis (also St Paul and Duluth) are pedestrian based. Montreal is, so far as I am aware, the closest we've come to what Paulo Solari had in mind with Arcosanti.

Vegas was the first place I thought of. It blows my mind how much indoor space there is there. I have always been fascinated by these massive interior spaces. Could I live there and go unnoticed?

In the 1960's, Montréal was considered the prototype of the city of the future. Montréal's notorious winters (-29° last weekend) has wrought it's famous "underground city" whose Complexe Desjardins (1975) is a good example of huge inner archiecture, only surpassed by the more recent Jacques Parizeau building atop a subway corridor that can legitimately be called a work of art, as it passes through an old bank vault whose shiny metal door has been left in place, like it was a piece of shiny abstract, stainless steel, cubist art. This corridor also connects to the World Trade Center, which makes a big indoor space by bridging a lane (where the old city wall used to be) lined with century-old buildings with a glass roof and end walls. And there is also the customary convention center, as well as the CN Central Station concourse, arguably the precursor of the underground city (1943), who would give rise to I. M. Pei's famous Place Ville Marie with it's bigger-than-it-looks lobby and vast, airy banking halls (1962) and that much-reviled Archigramish megastructure, the very much Brutalist Place Bonaventure (1962) whose strangest feature is it's 7th floor loading dock reached by a freestanding ramp... Nearby was also a Hyatt Regency hotel (now turned into a student residence) but it's lobby was kinda tiny compared to other Hyatt Regencies... But of course, you may want to read Reyner Banham's chapter "Megastructure Montréal" in his book "Megastructure" (1976) for more about Montréal...

Very much describes the Canary Wharf area in London. It's a huge labyrinth. You can go from one end to another, mostly underground. It took me months to figure out how to do this. It is dystopian and weird, but when the weather is crappy outside, it comes in handy. At least you don't _have_ to be underground or inclosed. You can walk outside and access a lot of places from the outside.

Taipei in Taiwan has a very interesting series of underground walkways - they allow you to escape rain and heat, and they run above the subway system. They have a fairly consistent appearance but different neighbourhoods have developed within them near the stations - here is the anime shop zone, next station down is the bookshop and stationery zone... and so on. While the spaces between some of the stations might be a bit empty during the week the practice of putting mirrors on one side means that on weekends groups of young people gather to practice their dance moves. The area above at ground level is also sometimes open as city park or market space. As noted in another comment with a densely populated city their is little danger of either the above or below ground walkways being empty of people, and it can make it more pleasant and faster to get around as the ground level pavements are already quite busy. Having both the above and below ground walkways allows more people to walk. A few unmentioned reasons on why the hotels you showed felt like liminal space. One is indoor air. Without very good air exchange indoor air becomes stuffy, and this sense is increased by the absence of natural light. I've seen posited on books about soil that we've evolved to live with the micro-organisms in soil and that's why forest bathing works, and perhaps why most of us feel the need to get outside even if for just a very short period of time several times a day. So the internal city might do better if it contained public areas that were more like the Flower Dome in the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, or , comparatively more modestly the typical hot house or cactus house, or at the very least a lot more air exchange. The other notable feature of the model hotel example was the way in which plants were used almost like a green trim. So there was a lot of pothos (Epipremnum aureum). A considerable improvement on no green space. But natural eco-systems are rarely composed of one species of plant so this ends up adding to the sense of liminal space, especially since the pothos was pruned to an unnatural shape, and pothos grows naturally with a wide mix of species. From memory this was fairly typical of the time when their was a fashion for treating plants like 'green architecture' and a bias against flowering plants. Really bad for biodiversity and pollinators. But also a caution that architects should work with horticultural experts, not just those who can create a fashionable look. An example of a good mix of plants is seen in the project trialling greening in tandem with solar panels project on Daramu House, Sydney, Australia. This is on a lower rooftop overlooked by surrounding skyscrapers, but recommended as a contrast not only for species biodiversity but also for the way that more natural appearance of mixed plantings, including flowering plants, overcomes the sense of dead space that the control area of roof has, and the liminal space effect that the way the pothos was grown in the hotel had.

Many affluent Chinese city centers, say, in Shanghai, Beijing, Qingdao, etc etc, have giant mall complexes with sprawling above-ground and under-ground layers of stores, supermarketse, restaurants, food courts, and art galleries. As someone who grew up in America and experienced the death of malls in the states, seeing these giant hyper-modern supercenter malls was quite surreal.

The Pedway looks more fun to explore and more interesting, that kind of chaotic interior underground sprawl is really cool to me. The Atrium is cool for its scale but otherwise pretty uniform and boring but would be cool to stumble upon in the middle of exploring a massive Pedway. While Facebook HQ looks like a disjointed eyesore of a mess I never want to step inside of, looks like a place you could never feel comfy in. The large sprawling but uniform airport terminal area in the beginning of the video is the most aesthetically and spacially appealing of them all though. Reminds me of exploring Penn Station and Grand Central.

It would have been interesting to include some of the wonderful indoor Arcades and Gallerias that were built in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Johann Geist provides a good overview in his classic reference "Arcades: The History of a Building Type". Also, it is important to note that some of the elevated bridges that link buildings across streets in places such as Minneapolis and Toronto are only open when the connected stores open and then welcome you into aisles lined by merchandise. Montreal's "underground city" has true public corridors that pass by stores that may be open or closed. Further, the sidewalks are much more welcoming without overhead passageways that block the view along the street.

You should look into the train stations of Japan! Bigger stations are built to be hubs in a city, filled with and surrounded by shopping centers, restaurants, office spaces, and apartments. Shinjuku station is so big I find something new almost every time I go there.

Montreal!! Also has a cool underground tunnels network downtown, that directly links to 4 different metro stations, 2 universities, china town, a conference center, newer and older office buildings etc... It's very convenient to avoid walking 20 minutes in -20C

The PATH in downtown Toronto is a great example, it connects Dundas Street all the way down towards Union Station at Lakeshore Boulevard near Lake Ontario (North to South) and University Avenue to Yonge Street (West to East)... It consists of entrances to the various financial and international business offices, shopping malls, food courts, etc...

I was very surprised to find out interior urbanism doesn't have a wikipedia page. You also mentioned interior urbanism appearing a lot in dystopian stories. I could also see it working very well in a solar punk setting. Or space opera - a specialized version of the planetary opera we see in from Edgar Rice Burroughs with his Mars stories. As a writer, I can see a lot of intense and interesting applications for it in the scope of those style worlds. Thank you for the video. That was really fascinating and now I'm thinking really hard about all the different applications of interior urbanism to world building in fiction.

Even as a child, when I walked to school in the rain or snow, I dreamed that the sidewalks were like long greenhouses, in which there was no bad weather and excess dampness. And I really like the idea of a prosperous version of Mega City One with quarters that are one big building, where even in winter you can move around in slippers and a T-shirt. Green areas can be placed in greenhouses on the roof. Of course, it will not be cheap, but it is easier to maintain the cleanliness and integrity of the structures indoors than in the open to all winds and precipitation.

Happy to see Houston's tunnels briefly mentioned. It's sad how severely underused they are since all the businesses focus on catering to those who work in downtown. By 3pm most of the places are closed, and the entire system is closed off to the public at night and on weekends. I've had numerous tourists ask me where they are only to tell them they're not open.

Oklahoma City has The Underground, which is kind of like Chicago’s Pedway. I used to take it to walk to work. It was pretty underutilized, though, and could seem a little creepy being alone in there. Not sure how much traffic it gets now after they revamped the whole thing.

I really enjoy your videos Stewart. I am a retired architect born and raised in the Detroit Suburbs.I have a near lifelong fascination with the RenCen in Downtown Detroit. My dad took me to see it under construction when I was 11 or 12 years old and I love exploring it's cavernous meandering spaces and riding the glass elevator to the 70th floor. Another fun experience has been arriving via the People Mover which was operating when I was in Architecture school in the 80's. Another exciting experience for me as a teenager was riding the people mover from Fairlane town Center in Dearborn to the Hyatt Regency hotel. It had a full height atrium with scenic elevators that ascended and descended absolutely quietly which completely fascinated me.

There was this really cool mall in Bucharest that felt like a bunch of disjointed shops stacked together which was so fun to explore!

As a kid I was obsessed with arcology. Buckminster Fuller's domed city, Whittier Alaska, and Seward's Success still fascinate me. I think climate change will lead to more indoor cities being built.

I was an intern one summer at the largest building in the world-- the Boeing Everett Factory just outside of Seattle. Tens of thousands of people worked in that single building, and it definitely felt like a city with constant construction and the chaos that comes with that. Underneath the building exists miles and miles of pedestrian tunnels (for ease of navigation-- away from the construction) laid out in a grid formation complete with underground auditoriums. Super easy to get lost.

Thanks for the great video. It got me thinking deeply about this again. The strength of something like the Pedway is it’s randomness and lack of consistency. Cities - especially old ones - are full of unplanned, non-productive, useless nooks and crannies, paths that have now fallen out of favor. A lot of planned spaces have an uncanny feeling, divorced from reality, engendering feelings ranging from unease to alienation. We can never feel “at home” in them. This is the “suburbanization” of space, which is wholly authored from above - regardless of how much data on user flows are gathered - to reconcile perceived human material needs with corporate objectives / vision. Campuses exist to martial Human Resources for organizational needs, so opportunities for the random or unexpected, chance, and direct user agency within their spaces, is eliminated or mitigated. I think the same will hold true on the Moon, Mara, or conceived virtual spaces. Be interested to hear folks’ thoughts. Thanks again. Great video.

Personally I’d love an Art Deco/Victorian/neo-classical/boroque indoor city/cities. Taking a lot of the most iconically beautiful architectural styles of our past for entire indoor cities could be considered mini triumphs, just don’t allow a bioshock situation, lol,

I'm in Chicago for school, and I braved the Pedway for the first time a couple weeks ago! For whatever reason, I caught it at a time where it was light in foot traffic, and it was such an eerie experience. Couldn't for the life of me figure out what direction I was headed in, though, and I wound up going for the cold instead...😅

The first thing that came to mind with interior urbanism was hospitals--like the big academic hospital complexes, that are all linked by sky bridges, tunnels, etc. They are definitely more of the unplanned type, with lots of old brick buildings linked by fancy new glass walkways. As someone who works in a hospital, the back hallways really feel like a city, with all kinds of healthcare people buzzing around to wherever they need to go. People will also appear and disappear through doors that I've never seen before. There's always multiple ways to get from point A to point B too, but the residents always know the most efficient one haha!

Mr. Hicks, I am an enthusiastic amateur observer of architecture as well as an engineering designer of industrial systems. In the days of my youth creating whimsical house designs (roller-skating rink in the basement) I was at the same time paying attention to the design of the constructed world around me. I appreciate the fact that you actually SEE that constructed world as I do. Thank you for this video.

Montreal's Underground City might be more architecturally interesting than Toronto's PATH, but the PATH seems like a more successful version of Chicago's Pedway based on its uniform wayfinding system and occupancy. When I was a student at U of T, I'd often make my way to campus from the east side of downtown through the PATH system. During the winter, I'd use it to avoid the rain and snow. During the summer, it provided respite from the humidity. No matter what time of year though, pedestrian traffic always seems to be evenly disbursed been the streets and the underground PATH. I can only imagine how much more the sidewalks would be congested if the PATH didn't exist. Working downtown Toronto, so many office workers in the towers above descend down to the PATH for lunch. And people don't just stay within the concourse level of their own tower, either. I'd often meet friends for lunch in other buildings within the system. With so many condos connected to the PATH and with so many subway stations on the PATH network, I can imagine there are people who can literally live indoors 27-7. I don't know if I'd like that. Duluth, Minnesota has a mini version of Minneapolis' Skywalk. It's a little more navigable than the one in Minneapolis, but it doesn't offer much in terms of retail. It's more of a literal pedestrian bridge system connecting the second floor of buildings than an urbanised space or indoor mall, which seems like a wasted opportunity. The retail on the street level should expand to the skywalk on the second level to keep the space active.

I live in Hong Kong and since space is limited, most malls here are built to work as sort of compact, self-contained ecosystems that can be linked to residential towers (usually connected by pedestrian walkways/or sitting right above the malls) and the underground subway system. I could spend an entire day "outside" without ever directly coming into contact with the "outdoor" environment at all because of how connected everything is. (It led to me developing Vit-D deficiency/SAD while I was in university during the colder seasons lol)

I have been curiously fascinated by Toronto's PATH- very similar to the Pedway (which I have never seen)... the city above alters, buildings are demolished, new ones go up, but the PATH remains. some of the businesses change, but the layout remains. I have found that if I feel vaguely disoriented in the downtown core- I just find a PATH entryway, and I can reorient myself...

Boston has a relatively small area that includes a convention center, a couple shopping malls, a couple office buildings, a few hotels, and a supermarket. I think it is unique among old Eastern US cities and possible only because most of the land was previously old railyards reclaimed for development in the 60s. When the city built its new Seaport District, it opted for buildings separated by a pedestrian hostile landscape.

I used to walk through the Crystal City underground in Arlington, VA every day. It’s like one liminal space that stretches for several city blocks.

I always loved the chaos of the Chicago pedway. You find unique shops and nooks and corners. It reminds me a lot of older hospital buildings where they were built ad hoc and you get changes in flooring etc. The Texas Medical Center is almost all connected above and below ground and it makes a crazy maze of architecture. Love it

This video remind me of my stay in Macau. Went there for about 72h and stayed at The Venetian Macau. I didn't step a foot outside until it was time for me to go to the airport, at which point i realised where in the world i actually was with the tropical storm raging on outside. I had been completely oblivious to the weather while i had roamed around the fake Venice indoors, while having enjoyed concerts, shopping and loads of food and sweets (never did venture inside the actual casino there though, as i was 4 months shy of being 21).

I really like the indoor palaces (cities within cities) of Naples Italy, with those huge doors that close on the street.

There are some really interesting examples of interior urbanism in Shenzhen, China. The city has a really well planned subway system with some of the stations resembling underground malls with restaurants and other amenities linking the in- and outbound boarding platforms. There is even at least one section of underground walkway adorned with shops that mirrors an above ground walking space.

I've never been able to navigate either the Pedway in Chicago or the Skywalks in Minneapolis. Sort of a hamster in a tube situation I think! It's amazing what a little foresight can do when planning large indoor spaces.

You should check out the areas around Shinjuku station or Tokyo station or Shibuya station in Tokyo. The tunnels cover huge areas of land and connect tons of different buildings.

Would have been good to see some global comparisons with urban areas. Eg Japan combines pedways + skyways to make truly complex additional sprawls. Some seem claustrophobic rat runs built possibly after the great quake of 95, but they're continually redeveloped and transformed into incredible multi level spaces. From B3 to FL30. See Umeda Osaka. Also Barcelona's underground spaces felt cramped and lacking. Hardly necessary when they have such beautiful piazzas, and atrium like gardens between and inside buildings. More on Japan. Didn't expand on the old Osaka pedways, which were a maze of rat runs and underground alleys filled with shops and bars etc. Sometimes claustrophobic, yet the random chaos somehow had an appeal.

Cruise ships are an extreme example. “Residences”, restaurants, lounges, theaters and a variety of entertainment options all in a Very compact space. The layout of the newest Royal Caribbean ships is particularly innovative.

As an architecture photography nerd that Hyatt building atrium is a freaking dreamland. So many interesting angles and perspectives shot opportunities. Now I need to go on my next time in the city.

I love when cool stuff like this finds me

this reminded me of Calgary's +15 system, one of the most extensive pedestrian walkway systems in the world covering 18km (11 miles) it's amazing to walk through, but very uncanny for sure, especially since it's central focus is shopping centres

Your comment about Portman's use of compressive and expansive spaces was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright ( his words) and was also used at the entrances which were intentionally confining then open into large volumes. The Peachtree Plaza was another good example prior to an unfortunate renovation. He was an avid people watcher and loved to create spaces to facilitate that such as the plaza at Peachtree Center in Atlanta. In the 80's a now defunct magazine called Progressive Architecture ran an article on his work commenting on what they saw as the overly controlled feeling of his buildings. They ended with a story of when he was on an exterior glass elevator with two others at the then Bonaventure in LA. They didn't know who he was when one turned to the other and said " this is better than Disneyland". He commented "I rest my case"

i actually love and appreciate all these,, i think it's nice to have the variety for lots of reasons

I’ve seen quite a few examples of indoor urbanism in China. Hong Kong in particular has quite a network of both underground tunnels and above-ground walkways that connect dozens of buildings. I’ve had a fascination with this since first visiting Hong Kong in high school in 1994.

I’ve actually been really happy to see the Chicago pedway evolving to be more like the massive shopping malls built around subway stations in Asian countries. The shops have an incentive to make the space bright and welcoming, while the city government seems to ignore those kinds of places until it’s time for a total renovation.

Obviously a bit much for this video, but I’d be intensely interested in your take on Soja and/or Jameson who I think would draw a parallel between Portman’s spaces- specifically their simultaneous efforts to be inclusive and coherent, while defying cognitive mapping and making entrance and exit difficult- with systems like the Chicago pedway creating the same effects seemingly organically. This maybe isn’t so apparent at O’hare (though there is something about looking down at those walkways with their op-art carpeting), but is overwhelming at the Bonaventure and Peachtree.

Just found this channel through recommendation. I Instantly think about Shinjuku Station tunnel system. It's vast.... multi-layered system that connects downtown Shinjuku from below. I remember how I Googled the route to my hotel in Shinjuku from the train station. It leads me through tunnels upon tunnels, up the the elevator, down the stairs, turn right, down again, up again, take a turn into small tunnel, up down, for the next 15 minutes, and voila I arrived right in the Hotel Lobby. Seriously amazed with the extensiveness of that hidden underground city. Tried the next day without the help of Google, got lost, and re-surface in different part of Shinjuku

This video provided so much insight into one of my favorite places - the Hyatt Regency O'Hare! Between this, the architecture unit in my Art Appreciation class this semester, and the fact that I haven't been there since the pandemic started, next time I visit my Hyatt home I'll see the atrium with entirely new eyes!

They seem awesome at first, then I remember the story on Mr. Ballen channel about the poor old dude who got lost in the basement hallways of some mall and literally died because he couldn't find his way out and no one happened to check that area. I was in the hospital for a month after a car wreck, and once when they were transporting me to another area, we passed close enough to an entrance that I could smell "fresh air" - in quotes, because downtown Memphis air is hardly fresh lol. It was so amazing, like suddenly waking up refreshed. Had no idea I was missing the outside until that moment or how much breathing only inside air could drag you down.

Crystal City, in Arlington VA was the first indoor/underground city I experienced. I found it pretty interesting to have a whole 'world' under the feet of the city.

I knew absolutely nothing about this topic. This was the coolest video I've seen in ages

Thank you for the informative video Mr. Hicks. It was very well done.

Compared to the outside world, these kind of indoor cities have lesser capability to change and adapt over time. One great example of such "stuck" monument is the central bus station in Tel Aviv.

In my travels through Japan, i came across some of the most impressive interior urban spaces , Korea also had some similarly impressive spaces, with vast interiors connecting subways, buildings, and malls. At one point i got off a subway, walked through what felt like a mile of shopping complex then to only exit out of the 4th floor of a building onto an escalator down to the street. How or at which point i went from underground to above ground baffled me and left an everlasting impression.

an amazing video about something i probably would have never been interested in, you have a new subscriber and ill be watching your other content when i finish this one

In Montreal we have a countless amount of tunnels to go around that link metro stations, universities, malls, hotels, the train station and so much more! It is much appreciated in the winter for sure.

My dad used to set up the christmas decorations at the Renaissance center thru the 80s amd 90s. He would take me with him and i was always amazed at that buliding and how much was inside. Everything you needed without leaving the site. Its kinda funny a few years after that he got a job going back and forth from Chicago to Detroit and thats when i learned about the pedway. Great video!

I commuted to work walking through the Toronto PATH (TO's equivalent to the Pedway) and I resonated very strongly with the way you described the ad-hoc surreallness of walking through these spaces

When I lived in Japan, I was amazed at the extensive interior architecture underneath much of the city connecting subway stations. These corridors housed shops, restaurants, and bars, and could be found everywhere in Tokyo and Osaka. They were very unattractive, however, and usually lacked any light from the outside. Even the shopping malls here in the US tried to incorporate some natural light into the design, but in Japan, not so much.

It's how the interior spaces meets natural light and use of greens which makes it lively and a good connect with the outside makes all the difference!!

Montreal also has "underground city" which is like a series of interconnected malls and metro stations because of the harsh winters.

Reminds me of the Arcology, a self sufficient city contained in one massive structure. I appreciate the points you made about these structures sucking people away from the older and more eclectic spots in a city, good to keep in mind

Cool subject! I think in general, the 20th century brought us all indoors for vastly longer than humanity ever had been before. I would say it's had pretty profound impacts on us as a species. I was surprised not to hear a mention of airports. An airport is a defining characteristic of the great cities of the world, and the ability to experience the city from the airport without going outside is a mind boggling concept. The great cities of North America have their airports connected via trains to their downtowns.

I really dig this "Forman lobby" style. It has such an eery and cool quality to it.

There was an apartment building in Bogota Colombia that i absolutely adored because of that interior design that the Hyatt has, so glad to see it has a word for it, I always wanted to live in a space like that. edit: The vertical atrium space extended all the way to the cieling however, so the whole building was capped with a glass roof, letting in tons of sunlight and reflecting off the white granite floors of the lobby 10 stories below.

It makes sense to me that this sort of thing catches on far stronger in places with extreme weather than where i am. San Francisco has a few spaces comparable to those vertical spaces, and none like the Pedway--no need for it when we hardly ever have bad weather

I've never seen anything like what was shown in this video and had no clue places like this existed in the states. I'm a bit in awe because I really like the concept despite the downsides of it. I think the closest I have seen that was actually shown in your video appears to be Fremont St in Las Vegas Nevada though I personally would not call that an indoor city.

More content like this PLEASE!!!

I'm from Calgary Alberta. We have a system in our downtown core called the +15. It's a series of elevated walkways (15ft above ground) that interconnect most of the buildings downtown. 132 buildings interconnected by 62 bridges that span approximately 18 km. Essentially turning our entire downtown core into an indoor city.

The Tokyo indoor/underground subway/train station complex in Japan is a vital, yet dizzying experience, even after having used it for more than a year of my life. Much of it is connected by extensive pedestrian pathways, creating an almost endless labyrinth of an indoor city.

Two of them really come to mind for me. The Tabor Center in the 80s was a grand gallery in the middle of downtown Denver. But it was the Cinderella City mall that really was the interior urbanism in action that I remember. Made up of 4 distinct 'malls' in a massive, sprawling complex that had an underground section that connected the food-court with some of the farther reaches of the complex. Each mall had a theme and they met with each other in a glorious clash. The place felt like it went on for miles. Long since torn down, it was quite the product of the 80s.

I transitioned from living in the open plains of Welsh cuountryside to Blade Runner style cities of Hong Kong. It was such a trip seeing how indor everything has to be due to the weather and population density.

The Atlanta Marriott Marquis is a truly startling building the first time you go into it and look up - this powerful psychological component to the architecture that comes from being entirely within something so massive. I used to describe it as like being inside the skeleton of some impossibly massive creature, the floors vaguely evoking a rib-cage. It's definitely outside my personal aesthetic preferences, but the power of its impression is undeniable and remarkable.

When I was in japan I was amazed to see that pretty much every larger city has one of those, spanning large areas. Some cities like tokyo have multiples Also this reminds me a bit to when I was on gran canaria. The weather here is highly constant throughout the year, and it is neither too hot nor cold. As such a lot of spaces built here were made in a very open way, where malls had no distinct inside or outside, and you'd find living room furniture in people's gardens and such