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There are plenty of stories about hundreds of underground cities being build here and there in USA, but I've only seen photos of one under the Denver airport (and even so it's no real proof that these photos are related to that place).

But would it be possible to build such huge infrastructures without having a major impact on the economy? As I know USA has a very big military budget, could it be used to hide those operations, if they exist?

Here are some examples:

photos

list of persons who claim they were there

While the 1st is self-explanatory, the second reference is just a list of key persons without any specific info. I was using this list to Google info on each person, and that's too big a list to put it here. Basically that's where I got those numbers about cities and average population.

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    Please add an actual source claiming this so that we will have better knowledge what this claim is about.
    – SIMEL
    Mar 6, 2014 at 15:23
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    Nothing about those photos look (to me) like they are for people to inhabit (implied by "underground cities"). They look like the typical sort of service tunnels/areas you see under/around/beside any industrial complex such as an airport. The photographer doesnt call these things cities - he calls them "tunnels under denver airport"
    – Jamiec ♦
    Mar 6, 2014 at 15:45
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    Your question was asking us to make a theoretical economics argument. This is not allowed here. We can only examine existing evidence (like photos or other proof of existence).
    – Sklivvz
    Mar 6, 2014 at 16:43
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    Dang, I was hoping for a Cheyenne Mountain write-up...
    – Larry OBrien
    Mar 6, 2014 at 18:25
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    Toronto has one.
    – gerrit
    Apr 16, 2014 at 20:08

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For a generalized listing: Underground city

Beijing's Underground City was built as a bomb shelter.

The Shanghai Tunnels connect the basements of many hotels and bars in Portland.

Several cities, such as Las Vegas and New York, have homeless populations living in underground tunnels (whose designed purpose may be for storm drains or the like).

Do city structures that were once at ground level, but have been built on top of and are now underground count?

The Seattle Underground was at street-level until the Great Seattle Fire damaged it, and the city built over top of the area rather than demolishing it and rebuilding in its place.

Underground Atlanta is a shopping center that was once at street level, but got built over and is now underground.

Chicago raised its street level in the 1850s as a means to deal with drainage from the lake. The city did not pay for home and businessowners to raise their buildings; combine that with the Chicago pedway...

How about catacombs or necropoli? These things litter the Old World, and while you don't generally get living residents in a "city of the dead," there are certainly plenty of people there.

That said, Paris has "cataphiles."

Also interesting: Disney, when building Magic Kingdom Park, first created the employee-only areas at ground level. The park that visitors see was built on top of that, resulting in the "utilidors" the cast uses to traverse the park unseen.

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    Add to that list an area for a about a block around the Mayo clinic in Rochester is served by tunnels. Given how cold the winters get there this is a very good thing for the patients that go there, not to mention it avoids having patients cross streets.
    – Loren Pechtel
    Dec 12, 2015 at 22:42
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    Actually, the Seattle Underground is a result of a civic project called the "Denny regrade" that took a large part of a hill near downtown and change its grade. That lowered the hill, raised downtown, and improved the harbor by making deeper anchorage practical. The effect was about a full story raise in street level in the core downtown area which is adjacent to the harbor. There was Great Seattle Fire, but it was unrelated to the regrading.
    – RBerteig
    Jan 28, 2016 at 23:10

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