New York's skyscrapers are causing it to sink – what can be done about it?:
The ground under New York City is sinking partly due to the sheer mass of all its buildings [...] As sea levels also rise to meet these concrete jungles, can they be saved?
[...] On the 300sq miles (777sq km) that comprise New York City sit 762 million tonnes (1.68 trillion pounds) of concrete, glass and steel, according to estimates by researchers at the United States Geological Survey (USGS). While that figure involves some generalisations about construction materials, that prodigious tonnage does not include the fixtures, fittings and furniture inside those million-odd buildings. Nor does it include the transport infrastructure that connects them, nor the 8.5 million people who inhabit them.
All that weight is having an extraordinary effect on the land on which it is built. That ground, according to a study published in May, is sinking by 1-2mm (0.04-0.08in) per year, partly due to the pressure exerted on it by the city buildings above. And that is concerning experts – add the subsidence of the land to the rising of sea levels, and the relative sea level rise is 3-4mm (0.12-0.16in) per year. That may not sound like much, but over a few years it adds up to significant problems for a coastal city.
New York has already been suffering subsidence since the end of last ice age. Relieved of the weight of ice sheets, some land on the Eastern Seaboard is expanding, while other parts of the coastal landmass, including the chunk on which New York City lies, seem to be settling down. "That relaxation causes subsidence," says Tom Parsons, a research geophysicist at the Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center of the USGS in Moffett Field, California and one of the four authors of the study.
But the enormous weight of the city's built environment worsens this subsidence, Parsons says.
And this is a global phenomenon. New York City, says Parsons, "can be seen as a proxy for other coastal cities in the US and the world that have growing populations from people migrating to them, that have associated urbanisation, and that face rising seas".
There is a wide range of reasons for why coastal cities are sinking, but the mass of human infrastructure pressing down on the land is playing a role. The scale of this infrastructure is vast: in 2020 the mass of human-made objects surpassed that of all living biomass.
[...] Can anything be done to halt these cities – which between them have hundreds of millions of residents – from sinking into the sea?
It's a relatively long article, but it clearly describes the extent of the problem.
Journal References:
1.) Land Area and Population - Per Square Mile New York - Northern New Jersey - Long Island (NY-NJ-PA)
2.) The Weight of New York City: Possible Contributions to Subsidence From Anthropogenic Sources Tom Parsons, Pei-Chin Wu, Meng (Matt) Wei, et al.
3.) (DOI: 10.1029/2022EF003465)
4.) Hotspot of accelerated sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America, Asbury H. Sallenger, Kara S. Doran, Peter A. Howd.
5.) Nature Climate Change (DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1597)
6.) Elhacham, Emily, Ben-Uri, Liad, Grozovski, Jonathan, et al. Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-3010-5)
7.) (DOI: 10.1029/2022GL098477)
8.) (DOI: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020JB020648)
9.) (DOI: 10.1016/j.cosust.2021.02.010)
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday June 07 2023, @03:04PM (1 child)
It could be a disastrophe if New York were to sink into the ocean before Florida is underwater, or California runs out of water.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2023, @03:30PM
Sometimes I'm truly surprised by Google search results, for example:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/submission/16578/disastrophe+ [collinsdictionary.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Wednesday June 07 2023, @03:34PM (14 children)
Then take the top halves and move them off Manhattan, into a subsidiary downtown. Maybe distribute them among the other boroughs. Problem solved!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 07 2023, @04:09PM
>into a subsidiary downtown
That would be diluting the short supply of Manhattan real-estate, dramatically reducing its value. Never gonna happen.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2023, @05:09PM (5 children)
Helium balloons, lots of helium balloons. That or hot air balloons, the politicians can keep them inflated.
(Score: 5, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 07 2023, @05:24PM (3 children)
Helium is too expensive, and in short supply. Hydrogen FTW! Big balloons hanging off the tops of skyscrapers, electrolysis to separate river water into hydrogen for the balloons and oxygen to sell in oxygen bars in the city.
What could possibly Hinder that Berg from floating?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2023, @09:29PM (2 children)
Helium would make the New Yorkers talk funnier.
(Score: 4, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 08 2023, @02:55AM (1 child)
Never tried Hydrogen, but I bet it would make them talk funny too - especially the smokers.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2023, @07:46AM
It does make them talk funny, but it also makes the Lab supervisor go apeshit at the idiots who were doing it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday June 08 2023, @04:18PM
I think your expectations of politicians may be a bit over inflated.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2023, @05:17PM (4 children)
Funny! But topping all those towers sounds hard, and since the mechanical floors tend to be toward the top, many would need additional work to keep the water, AC and heat running. Why not just move every other skyscraper? Taking away half of them should remove about the same weight....
There is some precedent, see for example:
https://www.nps.gov/caha/learn/historyculture/movingthelighthouse.htm [nps.gov]
And I'm sure the contractor, ICC, would be happy to have some of this NY City business!
https://www.icc-commonwealth.com/historic-preservation [icc-commonwealth.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2023, @05:27PM (3 children)
Personally, I'm in favor of a 30 minute warning before setting off 3 50 Megaton hydrogen bombs: one on Wall Street, one in Times Square, and one in Central Park. The movie rights should be worth Trillions, then rebuild the whole place on stilts.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday June 07 2023, @06:17PM (2 children)
50 megatons? You'd only need one...
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 3, Funny) by janrinok on Wednesday June 07 2023, @08:00PM (1 child)
Killjoy!
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday June 07 2023, @09:03PM
Mmm, perhaps. Just trying to be more efficient. Then again, there is no kill like overkill. *nods*
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 3, Touché) by istartedi on Wednesday June 07 2023, @08:20PM
The wisdom of Solomon!
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday June 07 2023, @08:43PM
Nah; put them on that mover for the NASA rockets and move them to solidider ground, man! I'm sure you could move the whole dang building then! Sho' 'nuff!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 07 2023, @03:35PM (20 children)
The usual solution: pile more fill on, raise the roads, raise the parks, just keep adding more fill (weight) which will make it sink even faster, but not as fast as they can bring in dump trucks full of dirt.
My Uncle was a civil engineer for the City of Miami for 30 years. He's a Boomer DINK so, while he never denied global warming and sea level rise entirely, he's pretty much in the "not my problem" camp about the whole thing. His perspective in the 1990s was: "Oh, we'll just build seawalls higher, raise the roads, etc. - sea level doesn't rise faster than we can build." I haven't had the same conversation with him recently, but I do know that raising all the roads in the Florida Keys where he lives is already proving too expensive just for the sea level rise they have already experienced.
Manhattan, on the other hand, is built on an even bigger pile of money than the Florida Keys - I'm confident they can afford the dirt.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by datapharmer on Wednesday June 07 2023, @04:19PM (5 children)
You'd be surprised just how poorly this plan works. Example: https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/raised-runway-at-fll-airport-no-match-for-historic-rainfall-despite-millions/3014487/ [nbcmiami.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 07 2023, @04:47PM (4 children)
Oh, yeah, Miami is built for what they used to call a 100 year flood, but we seem to be having those every 10 years or so lately. They had a 10 inches of rainfall in 30 minutes event once just before I drove to work, all kinds of places got deep - but it resolves (runs off to the bay) within a few hours, so there's not much point in huge investments to avoid a few hours of flooding every decade or so.
What I will say: building roads, runways, and other structures up to higher elevations works much better than the other popular favorite solution: pumps. I watched a parking garage in Coral Gables pump water out of the bottom level onto the street, whereupon it promptly ran down the storm drain - Yay? - Nay. The storm drainage was cut into the limestone ground, which is highly porous, good for drainage, but that same limestone was cut bare as a wall of the parking garage, so the water they were pumping out was just recirculating back into the garage as fast as they pumped it, pouring out of the face of the porous wall.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by datapharmer on Thursday June 08 2023, @01:05PM (3 children)
Yep. Pumps are a terrible solution all around. I grew up in an area where they had the bright idea to build houses in an area marked 'slough' with literal warnings from the original surveyors of the town not to build there, but property values went up, they dumped some fill in and built houses in neat little rows any way. The land was so low they had to install a series of pumps to lift the sewage to get it up hill enough to get it back to the sewage treatment center. Within a few years the houses all started cracking from floor to ceiling from settling into the swamp and then when any heavy rain came they started flooding, and when the power was lost for more than a few hours the sewage began running backwards. The middle-upper income out-of-towners that bought the swamp properties complained to the city and so they bought back a few of the houses to build huge retention lakes and pumps to move water into the ponds from the new drains and they added canals next to all the roads and installed backup generators for the pumps. All at great expense to the tax payers of the entire city.
Soon though, the lakes filled so they installed a dam at the bay and huge pumps to pump water from the lakes over the dam to get rid of it. Soon enough a larger storm came and the bay water rose and they kept pumping and it began running backwards over the dam and eventually the entire dam broke and water flooded backwards into the canals, into the lakes and into people's fancy swamp homes. They began evacuating people by boat. The city planners and builders lamented to the news 'Who could have ever seen this coming!'
I'll tell you who. The people that grew up there on the *higher* pieces of land and eventually moved away after repeatedly telling the city at public meetings this was a terrible idea and they would face epic flooding and the expense of human lives and tax payer dollars. When they didn't listen, we moved.
Now in my new town the land values have increased and the builders are building rows of neat little houses in what used to be water reclamation areas, but don't worry, they are building a big water holding area - like a park, but that's a series of ponds so the water can go somewhere different than into the areas it used to. I wonder how the new story will end? Who could ever see it coming?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 08 2023, @04:42PM (2 children)
It can be done, the Netherlands did it right, but they didn't do it to make a quick buck developing a subdivision before skipping town.
What odds do you put on your city planners getting fat kickbacks from the developers to approve their swamp projects?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Thursday June 08 2023, @07:07PM (1 child)
(The Netherlands were fighting against the water since the 1300s too.)
Even in the Netherlands, changes have to be made. In 2017 new security standards for waterworks were introduced, as engineers there learned that water not only can flow over dikes, but also under dikes. All dikes will have to comply by 2050, with some -- especially around nuclear power sites -- earlier.
Then there is climate change. The Delta Works -- the set of dikes protecting the North Sea coast, are designed to protect against a superstorm, occurring once in 10,000 years. Such a superstorm is defined as having average wind speeds of 170 km/h (106 miles per hour) [averaged over 12 hours, at a height of 2 km (1.24 miles) above ground level]. Such a storm is now modelled to occur once in a 1,000 years, while the projected superstorm speeds have moved up to 200 km/h (125 miles per hour).
That seems not to be the most urgent problem though; that problem is a (re)occurrence of what's called a water bomb; like the one that caused complete houses to be swept away in the border area between Germany and Belgium (the Meuse River, which bore the brunt of the runoff, also runs into the Netherlands). Apparently these things can happen anywhere i.e. they're not restricted to mountaineous or hilly forested areas or whatever: and government has already decided there's no prevention possible: the water simply has to be given more space.
To give an idea about the scale of such an event: the water bomb mentioned was caused by a rain cloud formation half the size of the Netherlands, but with its rainfall concentrated on an area of just a few hundred square kilometers, resulting [wikipedia.org] in from 192 to 271L water per square meter in 48 hours.
Finally, government in the Netherlands is thinking about introducing a water label for buildings, to indicate to prospective buyers what the flooding risk is. Maybe that's a good idea elsewhere too?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 08 2023, @08:35PM
In Florida the water label comes when you go to get homeowners' insurance, if your flood insurance rates are high - or impossible to get coverage - that's your label.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Wednesday June 07 2023, @04:21PM (9 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 07 2023, @04:49PM
That's not as crazy an approach as it sounds at first... I wonder if the Hudson and East Rivers deposited enough clay to make any such thing work around there. I suspect not, I'm pretty sure most of the taller skyscrapers there have foundations that reach directly to the bedrock.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2023, @05:44PM (2 children)
Think of the tourist dollars! And the Gondoala rowers can serenade you with rap songs. And most of NY food is already Italian.
See every problem really is an opportunity
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2023, @05:58PM
People will go fishing right out their living room windows, out their back doors, eventually from their 2nd floor bedroom windows. It's a win-win!
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Wednesday June 07 2023, @08:46PM
Get one building to lean over a bit and you'se got a money maker! All the photos with people pretending they're holding it up.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Informative) by RS3 on Wednesday June 07 2023, @05:54PM (3 children)
I was going to write something similar, including where some skyscrapers are leaning and they're injecting concrete under the foundations, like the Millennium Tower in San Francisco. Obviously that wouldn't be feasible for something the size of Manhattan.
Here's a pretty good brief video about concrete injection, including some current projects in Miami:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxsZrVXGa2s [youtube.com]
IIRC they did something similar for the Leaning Tower of Pisa [wikipedia.org] because it was slowly leaning more and more and would have toppled if they didn't intervene.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 07 2023, @08:57PM (2 children)
Skyscrapers in Miami are a scary business. Before building a 30 story hotel they'll bring in the equivalent weight in dirt and let it sit on the site of the future foundation to compact the subsoils for a long time, over a year IIRC, and then take the dirt away and start building the foundation on the pre-compressed site, all the while pumping water out of the sub-levels because they're below sea level.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday June 08 2023, @03:23AM (1 child)
Not a civil engineer (not civil at all!) but had to take a really good statics course in uni for EE program. Professor was an older (read: very wise and experienced) fairly well-known architectural / structural engineer. He / we went over many examples of structural problems, including often unanticipated forces and stresses on building structural components that resulted from ground / foundation settling. Again, not a civil eng, what you describe doesn't give me great confidence, but hopefully the Miami engineers have enough experience and knowledge. I guess it makes sense, but my "gut" feel is that I'd want to go very far down, hopefully to eventually find "bedrock"? Maybe it's very (too) far to be useful?
How about in any kind of flood possible area, all buildings have pontoons.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 08 2023, @10:58AM
There are limestone (coral) layers under Miami, but it's not what you would typically call bedrock.
I don't think they have built any leaning towers yet, but there was one on the river that sank down, lowering the ceiling in the parking garage several inches when they started to drive pilings for a new bridge next to it. That stopped the bridge construction and prompted a new flare footed piling design.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2023, @08:31PM
If they use water with lots of microplastics in it they could help solve three problems at once. New York sinking, microplastic pollution and carbon sequestration. Should work even better than just water too.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday June 07 2023, @08:15PM (3 children)
Well, based on the current haze and smoke from Canadian wildfires [weather.com], nobody will notice NYC sinking.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Wednesday June 07 2023, @08:50PM (2 children)
See, with all that smog, you never even noticed we invaded and took over, did you!
Biden's now in elder care and Eugene Levy is President.
Guns are banned, but your beer now tastes like beer.
Have a 2-4 day now, eh?
;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday June 08 2023, @03:07AM
All done with smoke, no mirrors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2023, @11:23AM
Wait, tastes like Molson or tastes like beer?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday June 07 2023, @05:47PM (1 child)
Attach giant balloons on top of the buildings to pull them upwards. The Empire state building already has (or had) a zeppeline docking station at the top, the giant spike thingy at the top isn't just a gigantic falos symbol.
It's that or just letting the city slowly sink, then build New New (new?) York on top of it. Damn Futurama saw this one coming to ...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 07 2023, @09:02PM
See above, I suggest using the more economical hydrogen instead of helium - you can get it by electrolysis of river water, then you can put tourist observation decks on the balloons with free oxygen bars supplied with the by-product of hydrogen electrolysis. What could possibly go wrong?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2023, @06:06PM
A solution [getyarn.io]
/s
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday June 07 2023, @08:17PM (2 children)
They already pump the subways don't they? Build a much larger version of the WTC's "bathtub" around the entire city, and install a city-wide sump-pump system.
It might sound ridiculous at first, but could be more economical in the long run as opposed to other approaches such as simply relenting and trying to enforce code that all current 1st floors be structurally resistant to water intrusion.
With a city-wide system (to be pedantic, borough-wide since I'm assuming this is just Manhattan), you get economies of scale. Levy a tax on buildings according to their weight in order to pay for it.
An added bonus of de-watering is that it not only keeps basements dry, but also reduces weight on the underlying strata.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 07 2023, @09:05PM (1 child)
Wasn't Manhattan a Dutch settlement in the first place anyway?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday June 08 2023, @03:12AM
Most definitely, and was called New Amsterdam.
https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2022/06/new-amsterdam-whats-in-a-name/ [newyorkalmanack.com]
https://blogs.shu.edu/nyc-history/tours/dutch-new-amsterdam/ [shu.edu]
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Friday June 09 2023, @08:41AM
If part of the world is sinking, it should be rising somewhere in the region to balance it out. So I'm wondering which areas around New York are rising while the city is sinking.