From London to Paris to Sydney, how the subway revolutionize cities

The overall impression upon exiting the new Abbey Wood station in southeast London is that you’ve arrived in a new city. The newly created square, a library, even a previously missing supermarket, small shops everywhere, and countless new apartments. The subway has passed through here and has changed not only the underground but also the surface of the city. This is the effect of the Elizabeth Line, the new metro of England’s capital, recently awarded the RIBA Stirling Prize 2024, the UK’s most prestigious architectural award, given annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

A design masterpiece dedicated to Queen Elizabeth II, the award’s jury described it as “An extraordinarily complex architectural feat, disguised as an elegant simplicity.” According to RIBA president Muyiwa Oki, “The Elizabeth Line is a triumph in architectural collaboration and offers an efficient and beautifully choreographed solution for central city transport. It is a tidy canvas that incorporates a series of refined architectural elements to create a cohesive identity throughout the line, allowing thousands of daily passengers to travel with ease.”

An advanced, high-frequency infrastructure, the new line of London Subway stretches 136 km with 41 stations, connecting the City with its suburbs. With the Elizabeth Line, for instance, the journey from Abbey Wood to Court Road (in the West End) has gone from 46 to 24 minutes; on weekdays, the subway has a capacity of up to 700,000 people.

Since its commissioning in 2022, the new line has also introduced an innovative approach to public mobility, evident in its substantial impact on urban development. The project included the regeneration of entire neighborhoods, becoming synonymous with city growth acceleration.

According to urban development expert Matthew Dillon, who led the City Economics team at Arup design collective in London, by 2031, the increase in visitors reaching Oxford Street via the Elizabeth Line is expected to boost annual business in the area by £13 billion.

Changing cities is the real mission of subways. Some, however, have a greater impact than others and leave a mark that lasts for years. In Australia, the Sydney Metro Northwest, the country’s first fully automated high-speed train system, was awarded Project of the Year 2020 for its impact on Australia’s sustainable mobility network and for creating 22,000 jobs from the start of construction to the project’s completion. The gem of the project is the Skytrain, a cable-stayed and curved bridge built by the Webuild Group, which was named “Project of the Year” by Engineering News Record (ENR) back in 2018.

Paris Subway

Even more than Sydney’s, the Grand Paris Express promises to profoundly change the mobility of one of the world’s largest capitals. For Paris, the goal is to create a new Subway network stretching up to 200 km, connecting nearly all the towns in Île-de-France, starting with Saint-Denis, which hosted the recent 2024 Olympics.

Milan’s Subway

Subways change urban life in countless ways: this is what has happened in Milan, where the recently inaugurated M4 connects Linate Airport to San Babila station, right in the city center, in just 12 minutes; from the far east outskirts to the west in just about 30 minutes.

Copenhagen’s Subway

The same impact was seen with the Cityringen Subway in Copenhagen, a circular line completed by Webuild in 2019, serving 85% of the Danish capital’s residents, with stations no more than 600 meters from their homes.

New York City’s Subway

Perhaps the most classic example of the impact of such large-scale projects, outstanding tools of sustainable mobility, is New York City’s subway, one of the most extensive networks globally, with nearly 400 km of tracks and 472 stations. On average, on weekdays, 5.5 million people ride its trains; 3.1 million on Saturdays and 2.4 million on Sundays. Annually, nearly 1.7 billion travelers use this means of transportation, which has contributed to the incredible growth of the Big Apple.

The history of subways speaks of progress, that of engineering science progressing alongside humanity. Since January 10, 1863, the day of the first journey of the “Metropolitan Train” (the subway predecessor connecting London’s Paddington Road and Ferrington Avenue stations), urban networks continue to be an essential and sustainable mobility tool. Today, they are present in 198 cities across 62 countries, moving billions of people, starting with the record-breaking Chinese subways: 3.8 billion passengers annually in Beijing, 3.7 billion in Shanghai, and 3 billion in Guangzhou.

Their development goes hand in hand with that of megacities, as well as modern, human-scale cities like Milan or Copenhagen, which have entrusted this means of transport with the keys to civic life. The Webuild Group has made a significant contribution to this development in 120 years of history with 100 projects, 880 kilometers of subway lines on five continents. Unique works like the New York and San Francisco subways, infrastructures known worldwide for their beauty, such as the Naples subway stations, or Doha’s Red Line North. All works that, like the Elizabeth Line, have profoundly changed urban landscapes, drawing new paths of development from invisible undergrounds.