Xiongan's underground backbone: The tech inside a 'city of the future'

Where many cities lay underground utilities without an integrated monitoring backbone, Xiongan has built a connected nervous system befitting China's "city of the future."

The startup hub in Hebei plays host to the 2026 Global Governance Forum from October 23-25, giving delegates a window into its "three-city" development vision: the city underground, the city aboveground and the city in the cloud.

Planners flipped the script from first principles: "Build underground first, above ground second." Unlike conventional cities, where utilities are laid separately, Xiongan routes water, power, telecom and heating through an integrated network of shared utility tunnels. 

Figures were released at an official Xiongan press conference in December 2025, showing more than 1,000 kilometers of pipelines run inside these corridors, a layout designed to eliminate chronic road excavation.

The 106-km tunnel network, running steadily for over 1,500 days by late 2025, operates as a living digital twin. 

BIM-based models and digital sensors monitor water pressure, temperature, humidity and gas levels, feeding real-time data into a central control system.

Robots do the legwork. 

State Grid Xiongan Power Supply Company engineer Wei Ziren notes that an 11.75 km stretch in the Zagang area – once a grueling 22-hour job for two human inspectors – is now swept by five Xiongan Lingxi quadruped robots in three to four hours.

Underground hardware feeds straight into the urban management platform. A "Beidou + 5G" indoor positioning system extends satellite navigation below ground to deliver parking-level precision in the Rongdong area, according to the Xiongan Aerospace Information Research Institute. 

Automated smart cameras flag standing water above 10 centimeters instantly. Integrated with the Baiyangdian watershed and designed to withstand a 50-year flood standard in the zone, the infrastructure reduces water runoff pressure while keeping spare capacity wide open for future upgrades, so roads will not need to be repeatedly torn up.