Shanghai Is Sinking: How Building Up Is Bringing It Down

Time Ecocentric:

Shanghai’s skyline glitters with sleek financial skyscrapers and glossy residential towers, but below the city’s lustrous facade lies an enduring problem. Thanks to mass urban migration, soft soil and global warming, Shanghai is sinking, and has been for decades. Since 1921, China’s most populous city has descended more than 6 ft. Across China, land subsidence affects more than 50 cities, where 49,000 sq. mi. of land have dropped at least 8 in.

Read the whole story at Time Ecocentric

From our partners

• Oklahoma Tornado Shows Progress In Weather Warnings - Climate Central
• Shopping Accounts For How Many Miles Traveled In U.S.? - Mother Nature Network
• Widespread Greenland Melting A Sign Of Things To Come - Climate Central

Comments

[Conspiracy2Riot]

11:27 AM on 05/22/2012

"In late April, a woman died after falling through the sidewalk into a pit of boiling water in Beijing."

Still reeling from the idea of that being how someone's life ends and Shanghai and 49 other Chinese cities are looking at a possible 9-27" of sea level rise in the next 40 years on top of pits opening up sporadically?

And Shanghai and Beijing house 23 & 20 million people, respectively?

This is going to be ugly.

[plans includingdog]

04:59 PM on 05/22/2012

It will be turned into a caldera.