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The toll of urbanization in China has been documented in a new paper published in the journal Science by a team of researchers from different institutions around the country. Using a method called spaceborne synthetic aperture radar interferometry (or InSAR), they were able to establish the rate... View full entry
San Francisco’s ill-fated Millennium Tower is making headlines once again for problems taking place beneath its turbulent foundation. This time, the 58-story skyscraper is sinking even further on its vertical axis as it settles to the north and west, alarming some building scientists who... View full entry
“Underground climate change is a silent hazard,” he said. “The ground is deforming as a result of temperature variations, and no existing civil structure or infrastructure is designed to withstand these variations.” — NBC Chicago
NBC Chicago reports on research from Northwestern University Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Alessandro Rotta Loria and his findings on the effect of density and subterranean heat in the city’s downtown Loop, where temperatures have been shown to be... View full entry
Despite initial progress in the first phase of the so-called fix earlier this year, the sinking and leaning Millennium Tower in San Francisco is now tilting more to the west than ever, according to monitoring data reviewed by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit.
The tower is currently leaning more than 29 inches at the northwest corner of Fremont and Mission streets, much of the added tilt occurring during the digging needed to prepare to support the tower along two sides.
— NBC Bay Area
The data came from a rooftop monitoring system, which the fix’s chief engineer Ron Hamburger said was less reliable than the one contained in its foundation before stating the half-inch tilt recorded was "negligible." A geotechnical engineer working on the $100 million project expressed his... View full entry
New York City is sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers, new research shows, which could put its population of more than 8 million people at an increased risk of coastal flooding. [...]
Researchers estimated the weight of all of New York City’s buildings to be around 842 million tons. But to find the areas more vulnerable to sinking — or, as they call it in more scientific terms, “subsidence” — a key factor to consider was the type of soil beneath the buildings.
— The Verge
A new study authored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) found the city to be sinking at a rate of between 1 to 2 millimeters per year, while parts of Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are subsiding at a rate of 2.75 millimeters. This comes at a time when planning... View full entry
Indonesia expects to begin construction in the second quarter on apartments worth $2.7 billion for thousands of civil servants due to move to its new capital city on Borneo island, an official said late on Tuesday.
Authorities have already started building basic infrastructure in the area, with an aim to start relocating some government administration and civil servants in 2024.
— Reuters
The 450,000-acre starter city’s initial residential program will include 184 apartment towers for a total of 14,500 government employees. AECOM and Nikken Sekkei are leading the development of its master plan towards an expected inauguration date to coincide with the country’s Independence Day... View full entry
It’s doing it (again). San Francisco’s Millennium Tower is on the move once more, this time in an entirely different dimension as the 13-year-old building is sliding while it sinks and tilts. Now the tower is said to be moving to the east, specifically. The firm in charge of stabilizing the... View full entry
[...] Millennium Tower – a luxury condominium where star athletes and retired Google employees bought multimillion-dollar apartments before they realized it was sinking – is continuing to sink and tilt to the side by about 3in (7.5 cm) a year, according to the engineer responsible for fixing the troubled building. — The Guardian
At that rate, the building’s elevators and sewage systems would cease to function within a few years according to engineer Ron Hamburger’s report to the city’s municipal Board of Supervisors last week. He also told the 11-member body that the movement was inevitable, adding that, based on... View full entry
Work on the $100 million fix of the Millennium tower has halted as engineers scramble to figure out why the building has suddenly sunk an inch in a matter of weeks since construction began, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has learned. — NBC Bay Area
The “perimeter pile upgrade” project, paid for as part of a confidential settlement reached last year, is designed to reinforce the foundation of the 58-story, luxury Millennium Tower after it had been discovered in 2016 that the northwest corner of the structure had sunk 16 inches since its... View full entry
Creating a work about the sinking high-rise was an easy choice, according to Martínez. “We started researching San Francisco, and current events in the city, and the Millennium Tower popped up,” Martínez said. “We knew almost instantly we wanted to do a project that was in some way going to connect with some of most expensive real estate on earth collapsing under the weight of itself as a metaphor for late capitalism.” — Hyperallergic
Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist of interdisciplinary arts collective Postcommodity were compelled to make an art piece based on the sinking, tilting Handel Architects-designed Millennium Tower in San Francisco, as a timely metaphor for late capitalism collapsing under the weight of... View full entry
Citing overcrowded conditions in Bangkok, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has said moving the capital is a possibility. [...]
“There are two possible approaches to moving the capital,” Prayut said. “The first is finding a city that’s neither too far nor too expensive to move to. The second is to decentralise the urban area to outer Bangkok to reduce crowding.”
— The Nation Thailand
In August, another Southeast Asian nation, Indonesia, announced that it had picked a site for an as-yet-unnamed new capital — away from the sinking and increasingly congested current capital Jakarta. Egypt has also been working to move its capital out of the wildly sprawling 'old' Cairo. View full entry
President Joko Widodo announced Monday that officials had chosen an area in East Kalimantan province, on the island of Borneo, for the as-yet-unnamed capital. Construction on the 450,000-acre site would start next year, and people would move in beginning in 2024. [...] Critics of the plan have warned that the cost of moving the capital could be untenable. [...] What’s more, shifting civil servants and their families to a new city in Borneo will not stop Jakarta from sinking, they say. — Washington Post
With some areas of Jakarta sinking as much as 10 inches a year, caused by the digging of underground aquifers and worsened by climate change, the need to relocate the capital has become more pressing in recent years. The effort will cost an estimated $33 billion, President Widodo said during... View full entry
All sides in the Millennium Tower debacle appear to be nearing an agreement on a $100 million-plus fix to stop the 58-story high-rise from sinking further [...]
The latest plan calls for drilling piles into bedrock from the sidewalk on the building’s southwest corner. The proposal would be less extensive and intrusive than the plan floated in April, which called for drilling as many as 300 micro-piles to bedrock through the building’s concrete foundation.
— San Francisco Chronicle
A large crack formed in a window at the sinking and tilting Millennium Tower over the Labor Day weekend, prompting officials there to block off part of the sidewalk on Mission Street as a precaution, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has learned. City inspectors issued a notice of violation on Tuesday, giving the Millennium management 72 hours to report back on the extent of the problem and the soundness of the building’s façade in light of the failure. — nbcbayarea.com
The latest safety concern over San Francisco's sinking Millennium Tower occurred Labor Day weekend when residents heard creaking sounds followed by a loud popping noise in the building. Soon after the incident a resident living on the 36th floor found a crack in his window. The high rise is... View full entry
In a city where a tilting 58-story tower has attracted international attention, the construction of big buildings now is scrutinized for any sign that a newcomer might be causing structural damage to its neighbors.
Which is why a full investigation was launched this winter after an anonymous complaint that the excavations for a pair of new, extra-tall towers were harming the 18-story high-rise in between.
And the scrutiny is certain to continue [...].
— San Francisco Chronicle
"The building in question is 25 Jessie St., an 18-story tower from the early 1980s," reports the SF Chronicle, and so far the structure has only sunk less than an inch—far less than the infamous Millennium "Leaning" Tower just two blocks away that has sunk 17 inches and tilted 14 inches to the... View full entry
