The Sinking Cities Edition

On CDMX, Jakarta, and geography

Colin here. Some of the world’s most populous cities are sinking. Mexico City is estimated to be falling into the earth by 20 inches per year. It is the result of a geological phenomenon that occurs when too much water is drawn from beneath the city. Wired explains: 

The foundation of the problem is Mexico City’s bad foundation. The Aztec people built their capital of Tenochtitlan on an island in Lake Texcoco, which is nestled in a basin surrounded by mountains. When the Spanish arrived, destroyed Tenochtitlan, and massacred its people, they began draining the lake and building on top of it. Bit by bit, the metropolis that became modern-day Mexico City sprawled, until the lake was no more.

And that set in motion the physical changes that began the sinking of the city. When the lake sediment under Mexico City was still wet, its component particles of clay were arranged in a disorganized manner. Think about throwing plates into a sink, willy-nilly—their random orientations allow lots of liquid to flow between them. But remove the water—as Mexico City’s planners did when they drained the lake in the first place, and as the city has done since then by tapping the ground as an aquifer—and those particles rearrange themselves to stack neatly, like plates put away in a cupboard. With less space between the particles, the sediment compacts.

The problem is also happening in another of the world’s most populous cities, Jakarta, which is sinking by about a foot a year. Similar to Mexico, one of the causes is illegal wells that deflate the marshes under the city. 

Why is this interesting? 

In this instance, a drastic proposal is moving the country’s capital to the island of Borneo, 900 miles away from Java (where Jakarta sits). Prior to the switch, a lot of figurative duct tape was applied to Jakarta: sea walls, construction, and other methods to stave off the encroaching sea. But now, the President, Joko Widodo, envisions building a green city from the ground up. 

The Times goes in-depth with a sweeping, must-read report:

Mr. Joko is using his presidential authority to forsake the capital on the slender island of Java and construct a new one on Borneo, the world’s third largest island, about 800 miles away. The new capital is to be called Nusantara, meaning “archipelago” in ancient Javanese and befitting an unlikely nation of more than 17,000 islands scattered between two oceans.

Indonesia encompasses hundreds of languages and ethnic groups. Some of its regions are governed by Shariah-inspired rules, gripped by separatist fervor or animated by Indigenous traditions. It is also a secular democracy with the world’s largest Muslim citizenry, a sizable Christian minority and several other official faiths. Although deadly sectarian conflict has flared over the decades, Indonesia has cohered while other countries have come apart. A new capital city for a place with such disparities and diversity presents both a challenge and a chance for reinvention.

It is a utopian vision with ostensibly noble intentions. But corruption is rife in Indonesia, and so are the problems of graft in construction, real estate collusion, and just the entire issue of moving a capital (not to mention the people still living in flood-prone areas in Jakarta). The awe-inspiring scale and ambition of the project rival something we’d see in Saudi Arabia, but the friction, cultural battles, and sheer ambition of the project will be interesting to observe over time. (CJN) 

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)

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