On a geological time scale 2cm a month is basically freefall
Yeah I was like wtf. 2+ meters a decade sounds like a lot of infrastructure will crumble.
It is the result of the acquifer beneath the city being crushed because there is no water in the pore spaces because the acquifers have been unsustainably drawn, this is the surficial expression of a slow strangulation of Mexico City’s water supply and it is a tragic blow to North America’s most important city.
North America’s largest city anyway, almost the world’s largest city, if you count the shanty towns. Tokyo and I think somewhere in Indonesia even might have surpassed them in population at least officially. They were at 20 million Metro I think 26 years ago. Not including the shanty towns.
As far as I understand it, going up is where it starts to get really spicy in volcanic active regions.
So could be worse.And, from the article, reason for the sinking is the draining of the underground aquifer that supplies the city and which is shrinking dramatically.
So, the sinking really is not the main problem.I also find the positive feedback loop ‘sinking because of draining water’->‘breaking pipes because of sinking’->‘more draining water because of broken pipes’ interesting.
Mexico City is also built on an infilled lake bed, so no foundations at really going to bedrock. And dropping that much a month is going to destroy gas lines, electric all connections, and water lines which will cause a whole less of problems
It also is surrounded by mountains that trap all the pollution on the ground and make it one of the most polluted places for air quality, obviously India is worse in places now, they also have centuries of affluvia built up, sewage that is all dried up in the ground, it eats away at Foundations at concrete, it throws up a mist of sewage vapor when it first starts to rain.
26 years ago I think I read that New Orleans is Sinking like an inch or two year. A lot of cities are sinking I forget which other ones.
"My memory is muddy, what’s this river that I’m in?
New Orleans is sinking, man, and I don’t wanna swim"
That picture has new orleans written all over it.
