The ground of New York City in America is collapsing every year due to the pressure of the skyscrapers built there. Earlier, the same was seen in San Francisco in 2020, when a $100 million project was launched to prevent the Millennium Tower from tilting and collapsing to the ground.
A new debate has started after this incident in New York City. A study shows how much weight is responsible for sinking a city. Work began on a major project by the end of 2020 to prevent San Francisco’s Millennium Tower from tilting and collapsing into the ground. Skyscraper occupants learned that a 58-story building sank 16 inches in a decade. According to scientists, the problem of a minaret or a city collapsing is not a small one. This is not just a problem related to the Gulf or coastal areas. High and big buildings are collapsing to the ground, while on the other hand, the sea level is continuously increasing as the glacier melts at a rapid pace.
According to a study published in the journal AGU Advances, how much does the burden of urbanization contribute to drowning the city. Land subsidence of the city is a geological phenomenon, which is also known as land subsidence. According to the authors of the study, one of the many causes of land degradation is urbanization. Its impact is increasing because more and more people are migrating to cities. In this case, it is suspected that a developed city with a dense population will soon sink compared to a less developed area. Currently, about 50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities. It is estimated to increase to 70 percent by 2050.
Tom Parsons, a seismologist at the US Geological Survey and the author of this research, studied the Bay Area of San Francisco. He estimates that the combined weight of all the buildings in the San Francisco area is about 1.6 trillion kilograms, or 3.5 trillion pounds. As the city developed over time, the land sank 80 millimeters or more than three inches. Parsons says – this is a traditional assumption. However, it is very difficult to estimate the weight of every item in any city. He said – most of the goods in the city remain inside the building.
Parsons calculated his model using public data on the height and base profile of every building in the San Francisco Bay Area. He did not include roads, bridges and other fixed structures and the people living there in the model. According to him, the pressure of the big building is enough to contribute to the sinking of the area. This study was preceded by a 2018 study that found densely populated coastal areas around San Francisco with a population of more than 7 million are sinking at a rate of two millimeters per year, while some areas are sinking at a rate of 10 millimeters per year.
