The Metro Network as a Heritage System for Historic Urban Landscapes: A Critical Review from China to Spain

The design of metro stations, together with the artistic, cultural and media devices that populate underground metropolitan transport networks, is a field of study still predominantly in the realm of technology. Up to date, its increasingly important connection with the Historic Urban Landscape Approach championed by UNESCO remains understudied, particularly from a critical perspective. This paper aims to address this challenge by placing the cultural heritage discourse at the centre of the analysis of metro networks, from their planning, construction and subsequent use, understanding their extraordinary impact on the ways in which cities are lived and represented. The paper introduces four cases in Spain and one case in China: Seville, Malaga, Granada and Shanghai, with recent metro infrastructures and a high profile as heritage cities. Through visual methods, discourse analysis, interviews and direct observation, this paper presents the HUL_UG project developed by the author at the University of Seville. The project addresses underground metropolitan transport networks as heritage systems of enormous complexity, ranging from their controversial relationship with archaeology to their impact on city branding, including the role of metro station design in the historic urban landscape; its impact on tourism, and its link with social processes such as gentrification.