Heard this story on NPR yesterday: ‘A Universe Beneath Our Feet’: Life In Beijing’s Underground : NPR. It discusses the growing trend in Beijing for people to be living in apartments / basements comlpetely underground. This is happening for multiple reasons and it clearly has some potential big consequences. It does seem like a possible important area for “microbiology of the built environment” studies as these apartments seems be on the extreme edge of certain building parameters (e.g., no windows, unusual air flow, lack of natural light, very damp, etc). Could make an interesting comparison to other studies of built environments and their microbiology.