Underground lairs have hollowed out London. Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO One of London’s most unusual luxury trends might be its gigantic basements. Professor Roger Burrows and his coauthors collected data on every basement construction project in from 2008 to 2019, and mapped it. They found more than 7,000 basement additions had been built. A combination of historic preservation laws, rapidly ballooning property values, and changing tastes have led to a boom in basement building. This construction hasn’t been without complications. Many of the existing residents see the constant construction as a “plague” that’s hollowed out the city, contributed to air pollution, and even changed the acoustics of their homes. Burrows sees it as a symbol of increasing wealth inequality in the global city. Correction: Typo 1:25, Roger Burrows is Professor of cities at Newcastle University. Further Reading: You can read the full paper, by Burrows and his coauthors, here: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/apl/news/item/bunkering-down/ This DailyMail article chronicles the collapse of a mega-basement: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8908815/Chelsea-mansion-collapses-building-work-create-mega-basement-6m-property.html Here’s Brian May’s Instagram post, included in the video, about his basement flooding: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRQOnqIFl6e/?hl=en Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com/ Make sure you never miss behind the scenes content in the Vox Video newsletter, sign up here: http://vox.com/video-newsletter Support Vox's reporting with a one-time or recurring contribution: http://vox.com/contribute-now Shop the Vox merch store: http://vox.com/store Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE Follow Vox on Facebook: http://facebook.com/vox Follow Vox on Twitter: http://twitter.com/voxdotcom Follow Vox on TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@voxdotcom