Detroit Is Sinking Each Year – Here’s What that Means

You've no doubt heard the phrase "the weight of the world is on your shoulders." But for nearly all of America's cities, the weight is absolutely slumping the earth.

Here's the surprising story of why every major American city is sinking.

Take the largest 25 cities in America and all but two of them are sinking into the ground anywhere from 1 to 5 millimeters per year.

The Unseen Threat: A "Slow Moving Hazard"

According to a study published in the journal Nature, the sinking of American cities is a "slow moving hazard" that will impact both the environment, people and economies. This change would be due to increased flooding, damage to structures like large building and traffic infrastructure.

The cause is blamed on groundwater extraction meaning we're taking more water from the ground than can be replaced and the collective weight of a city weighs down on the land beneath it.

The concept and the map of the shrinking cities was shared to a subreddit of Reddit for map enthusiasts.

25/27 of America’s Largest Cities Are Sinking
byu/Express-Succotash248 inMapPorn

Detroit is on the lower end of the shrinking scale with a sink rate about on-par with neighboring metros like Columbus and Indianapolis and less than Chicago.

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The shrinking in Detroit was far less than cities in Texas with the nation's leading shrinking cities Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston.

A Regional Anomaly: The Long Term Rising Midwest

Many were quick to share that the Midwest is also rising as a whole due to a process called isostatic rebound - a epochally long process where the land in this region was compacted by ice age glaciers and is now rebounding to higher level.

So the map in question shows "modern, short-term rates [of sinking], rather than geologic, long-term rates."

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While a few millimeters of sinkage may not seem alarming nor a pressing issue, it's just one of those grand scheme of the world things that just may keep you up some night.