New York City is sinking like Venice.

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New York City, with its towering skyscrapers and seemingly never-ending construction, is so heavy that it's sinking at the same rate as Venice, Italy — perhaps the most famous rapidly-submerging city. More than 8 million people call the Big Apple home, and a recent US government report warns that New Yorkers, as well as other residents of coastal cities around the world, are facing a wave of intense subsidence, or the gradual caving in or sinking of an area of land. And the problem is likely to worsen as coastal cities around the world continue to grow in population and building density, researchers said. A May report from the United States Geological Survey titled "The weight of New York City: Possible contributions to subsidence from anthropogenic sources" found that New York City is sinking 1 to 2 mm per year as sea levels rise and hurricanes increasingly threaten the region.

Researchers calculated the mass of all the buildings in New York and modeled the subsidence caused by the pressure that those buildings are exerting on the earth. And while 1 to 2 mm is the average throughout the city, some parts of New York City are subsiding even faster. The threat of sea level rise is three-to-four times higher in New York than the global average along the Atlantic Coast, according to the study, and sea levels around the world are expected to rise 200 to 600 mm by 2050. New York's 1 to 2 mm loss per year puts the East Coast city at the same sinking rate as Venice, Italy, the collection of islands known as "the floating city," according to Venezia Lines, the leading ferry company in the north Adriatic.

Government officials have constructed special barriers to reduce the amount of water that spills over at high tide in Venice, but the ever-encroaching saltwater has already had a "crumbling" effect on Venice's buildings, Venezia Lines said. The ground floors of many apartments throughout the city are no longer habitable due to subsidence, and experts have suggested the city could be entirely underwater by 2100.
Other cities around the world, including several in the US, are sinking at an even more alarming rate. "New York is emblematic of growing coastal cities all over the world that are observed to be subsiding," government researchers wrote in the study. "Meaning there is a shared global challenge of mitigation against a growing inundation hazard."
https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc-sin ... est-2023-5

Four of the five boroughs/counties that comprise NYC are located on islands.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New York City is sinking like Venice.

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The vast majority of skyscrapers are in Manhattan. The skylines of Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx are much MUCH flatter. And there are these new super-tall, super-ugly residential condo-scrapers and the one on Park Ave is catastrophe waiting to happen (J-Lo and A-Rod had a condo there before they split up). The construction problems are SO bad it's a miracle the damn thing doesn't collapse on its own! Manhattan is the problem, not the other boroughs.

Skyscrapers are now popping up across the Hudson in Jersey City where 99 Hudson Street is 900' and 79 stories and the Goldman Sachs Building is almost 800' and 42 stories. 11 of the 10 tallest buildings in New Jersey are ALL in Jersey City.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: New York City is sinking like Venice.

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I agree YT, the skyscrapers are definitely a Manhattan Island thing not really Staten Island or Long Island (Brooklyn & Queens). It's not just the weight of the buildings, with global warming sea levels are rising, all coastal lands are affected. Florida is experiencing it, especially Miami, Tampa and the Keys.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New York City is sinking like Venice.

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I seem to recall that the entire eastern seaboard is sinking as a consequence of the glaciers melting at the end of the last Ice Age. Glaciers pushed down on the center of the continent, so the edges popped up, and now they're gone and the crust is returning to its normal condition. We just made the mistake of building there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithospheric_flexure

Of course, the skyscrapers are all on granite but the rest of the islands are covered with soft sediment - which is why they didn't build the skyscrapers there. Pumping groundwater out of the mushy stuff certainly hasn't helped any. Building on top is just icing on the cake. Remember Hurricane Harvey? The weight of the rainfall was enough to deform the crust in a way you could measure from space.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09 ... -a-little/

I wouldn't be caught dead living on a coastline what with sea levels rising and all. I mean, I might be caught dead, but I wouldn't be living there, if you get the drift.

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