Causes of City Sinking
📌 90% of megacities are vulnerable to sinking due to natural and human-made factors like climate change and excessive groundwater extraction.
💧 In Jakarta, excessive groundwater pumping has caused the northern part to sink by up to 11cm per year between 2014 and 2020.
🧱 Natural factors include living on low-lying deltas with compressible soil, making cities like Jakarta prone to compaction when groundwater is removed.
🏗️ Other human factors include land reclamation, where new land is added at ocean edges for infrastructure, also contributing to sinking.

Impacts and Urban Challenges
🏡 Residents in sinking areas, like Northern Jakarta, are forced to gradually elevate their house floors (up to 1 meter over time) to mitigate increased flooding risks.
📉 The combined effect of land sinking and sea-level rise (driven by melting ice and thermal expansion) leads to more severe and prolonged floods.
🏙️ Rapid urbanization in Asian cities leads to increased water demand; lack of piped water forces residents to drill wells, accelerating groundwater depletion.

Mitigation Strategies and Solutions
✅ The Indonesian government has recognized groundwater extraction as a cause and has begun to ban pumping in certain areas.
🇯🇵 Tokyo has been proactive since the 1960s, imposing strict groundwater pumping regulations and compensating by building dams and reservoirs for surface water supply.
🧪 Shanghai successfully implemented a strategy of injecting purified surface water into the ground to replace extracted groundwater, stabilizing the land.
🌱 The "sponge city" concept encourages communities to create more green spaces to absorb rainwater, allowing water to naturally recharge the soil beneath the compacted land.
🛶 Architect Kunle Adeyemi designed the Makoko Floating System in Lagos, utilizing adaptable, prefabricated timber structures to thrive in challenging waterfront and rising sea-level conditions.

Key Points & Insights
➡️ The primary driver for sinking in many coastal cities is decades of excessive groundwater extraction, requiring long-term regulatory action.
➡️ Adaptive architecture, such as floating structures, offers resilient solutions for communities facing inevitable sea-level rise.
➡️ Recharging the ground with purified surface water is a proven method (used in Shanghai) to counteract historical groundwater depletion effects.

📸 Video summarized with SummaryTube.com on Nov 30, 2025, 14:36 UTC