Taming Underground

This paper examines how the urban underground is organized and managed during construction projects, focusing on professional boundaries between asset managers and project managers. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a large underground utilities construction and renovation project, the paper analyzes how the underground is made sense of in everyday project practices. The findings show that during construction the underground was framed as an ambiguous entity, simultaneously treated as a manageable technical space and as an uncontrollable source of risk. Although largely absent from planning routines, underground conditions repeatedly disrupted project performance through delays, budget overruns and physical damage. Risk management became the dominant response to these disruptions. However, despite the involvement of underground experts, uncertainty could not be eliminated and projects proceeded with the expectation of further unforeseen events. Experts navigated this uncertainty by mobilizing a dual framing of the underground: as a controllable container for infrastructure and as a natural force beyond managerial control. The paper argues that the agency of the underground is decentralized and relational, emerging through local practices, narratives and material conditions rather than residing in a single actor or substance. By showing how managerial framings themselves become agentive, the study contributes to research on infrastructure governance and project management by reconceptualizing the underground as a distributed and untamed agent in urban development processes.