The Weight of New York City’s Infrastructure: A Risk Factor for Subsidence

In New York, urban planning favors this risk factor. According to scientists, the city’s infrastructure weighs 1.68 billion billion tons, or the weight of 140 million elephants. While most of these buildings are built on solid rock, others were built on clay and sandy soils, which aggravates the subsidence.

“The softer the ground, the more compression there is from the buildings. It was not a mistake to build such tall buildings in New York, but we just have to keep in mind that whenever you build something there, you sink a little more into the ground”explained Tom Parsons, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey, who led the study.