Detroit and other cities are slowly sinking

The biggest U.S. cities are sinking, and Detroit is among those where the problem is most widespread.

Why it matters: Land subsidence, or elevation loss, is an invisible and slow but growing threat to urban infrastructure. It’s cracking roads, destabilizing buildings and making low-lying areas even more flood-prone.

  • Detroit, a river-adjacent city that suffers from aging water infrastructure, has had several devastating floods in the last decade.

Driving the news: In a peer-reviewed study published last week in Nature, researchers analyzed six years of satellite radar data in the 28 most populous U.S. cities.

  • They found that 25 of the 28 cities are…

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