TITLE:
Intelligent Oxygen-Enriched and “Sterilized” Underground Gyms: Background, Dilemmas and Pathways
AUTHORS:
Jianzhong Sun, Lili Jin, Chan Lin, Lei Wang
KEYWORDS:
Underground Space, Gyms, Air Quality, Intelligence, “Sterilization”
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.15 No.11,
November
1,
2023
ABSTRACT: The
in-depth integration of healthy China with national fitness and the hope to
achieve the long-term goal of “leading
Sports Nation” by 2035, can’t be realized without gyms where people do
physical exercise. The international academic community recognizes that the 21st century is the golden time for sustainable and quality development. Taking a
national perspective, authors of this paper studied the feasibility of building
underground gyms in China through the approach of interdisciplinary research, as well as its dilemmas and pathways, and found out
that quality development of underground space can effectively address
challenges for large cities in China by increasing the resilience of urban area,
and give full engage to underground capacity in striving for the goal of carbon
peak and carbon neutrality. Underground
gyms can also be incorporated into resident’s 15-min fitness circle, satisfying
people’s needs of doing exercise at any time and in an easily-accessible place.
However, China’s underground area development has been hindered by unclear
property rights, chaotic action and utilization, and relatively backward laws
and regulations. Moreover, building underground gyms still has to solve many
problems such as poor air quality, severe sweat smell, and excessive bacteria
and viruses. It is suggested that the capable authorities shall first clarify
laws and regulations over place compound utilization, property rights and fire
protection to facilitate the process of building underground gyms; encourage fitness practitioners to explore underground
areas as gyms, and transfer their ground business to underground; then produce an intelligent and
systematic solution of air quality improvement featuring oxygen-enrichment and “sterilization” with integration, a variety of instruments to monitor air quality of
indoor gyms in real-time, to realize automatic control and management, and
truly create worry-free and oxygen-enriched underground gyms with no sweat
smell and no fear of bacteria and viruses.