New York City is sinking, in part because of the extraordinary weight of its skyscrapers. New research has found that the city is subsiding by 1-2 mm a year on average, although some areas are sinking much faster (lower Manhattan is particularly at risk, with Queens and Brooklyn noted as other areas of concern). The research, published in the Earth’s Future journal, calculated that the city’s buildings weigh around 1.68 trillion lbs. This sinking feeling is not unique to New York – the paper notes that major cities on every continent except Antarctica are subsiding – but it increases the city’s already significant flood risk. Two recent hurricanes – Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and Hurricane Ida in 2021 – caused casualties and heavy damage, but the majority of structures built post-Sandy in flood-risk areas have not been built to floodplain standards.
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