San Francisco Misplacing Its Footing
Some cities rise by industry, some fall by misfortune, and then there is San Francisco, which appears to be doing both at once out of sheer originality.
The latest from NASA, which watches us from above like a patient landlord, is that San Francisco is sinking faster than it previously admitted. It is not the sort of confession a city makes willingly, so it required satellites, mathematics, and a certain amount of polite suspicion to bring it out.
For years, learned men measured the Pacific and declared how high it might come by 2050, which is safely far enough away to permit confidence. They accounted for tides, storms, and the ocean’s general ambition.
What they did not fully account for was the inconvenient habit of the land itself to descend while calculations were getting mathematized. It is difficult to keep your head above water when your feet are negotiating separate terms.
By viewing satellite imagery instead of the older practice of consulting tide gauges, scientists claim that the situation is more energetic than expected. The Pacific is rising, yes, but Frisco is also quietly lowering itself to meet it, like a host bowing too deeply to a guest who never leaves.
The result is that what they predicted to be a modest inconvenience by mid-century may now arrive with twice the enthusiasm. Odd that financiers once claimed Virginia City, which gave rise to that "City by the Sea", would soon slip from Sun Mountain, tumbling into oblivion.
It has consequences. Flooding, for one, becomes less of an occasional visitor and more of a recurring tenant. Extreme weather, which already enjoys a reputation for poor manners, finds the door a good deal easier to open when the house has settled several inches into the welcome mat.
Los Angeles, not wishing to be left out of any modern calamity, appears to be engaged in a similar experiment with gravity, though perhaps with less ceremony.
Now, I ain't an engineer, but I have always held that building a great city on the edge of a restless ocean is an arrangement that requires mutual respect. If one party grows larger and the other gets smaller, the terms need rehashed.
Still, there is something admirable in San Francisco’s approach. Where other cities resist change, it embraces it, gradually, steadily, and in a downward direction.
If this keeps up, the future citizen may stand upon the shore, gaze out across the water, and remark with satisfaction that the sea has finally come to appreciate the city, so much so that it has decided to keep it.
