With urban tunnel construction growing worldwide, the ability to accurately predict the ground and structural response to tunnelling and the associated risks is now more important than ever before. Engineers are expected to consider all aspects of tunnel engineering in order to safeguard existing infrastructure, by employing field monitoring, physical modelling and numerical analysis in developing a detailed knowledge of multiple soil-structure interactions.

The Géotechnique Symposium in Print took place at the Institution of Civil Engineers on 14th September 2017 to discuss the wider aspects of tunnelling in urban locales. The papers included here bring together important international research presented at the symposium and featured in Géotechnique. Topics of discussion, amongst others, included:

• case studies from Crossrail, CTRL and Barcelona metro projects


• open-face tunnelling effects on non-displacement piles in clay


• influence of building characteristics on tunnelling-induced ground movements


• impact of new tunnel construction on structural performance of existing tunnels.

Tunnelling in the Urban Environment offers practitioners and researchers alike with important coverage of the increasingly complex and varied challenges engineers have to face when constructing tunnels in urban centres.

Kevin A. Young is Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, U.S.A. His research interests include the history of Latin America, imperialism, political economy, social movements, and political sociology.

Michael Schwartz is Distinguished Teaching Professor, Emeritus, at Stony Brook University, New York, U.S.A. His research areas include political economy, social movements, social network analysis, racism and racification, globalization and war, and critical pedagogy.

Richard Lachmann was Professor of Sociology at the University of Albany, New York, U.S.A. He authored or edited many books, including Capitalists in Spite of Themselves: Elite Conflict and Economic Transitions in Early Modern Europe (2000), States and Power (2010), What Is Historical Sociology? (2013), and First-Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers (2020). He died unexpectedly prior to the completion of this volume.