Mexico City is one of the major cities with the fastest subsidence in the world, meaning that it is slowly "sinking" in the ground, in a rate of nearly 14 inches (35 centimetres) per year. This is caused because the Mexican capital was built atop an aquifer, and extensive groundwater pumping, combined with the weight of urban development of nearly 20 million people, has resulted in the compaction of the ancient lakebed beneath.
This issue was first documented by an engineer in 1925, and NASA studios show that the city is subsiding faster, which can cause infrastructure damage. How can they know? Because of tracked information from NASA satellites, particularly the NISAR, a radar satellite launched in July 2025, that tracks subtle motions in the land, and captured measurements between October 2025 and January 2026, during Mexico City's dry season.
<social>https://x.com/NASAJPL/status/2049612163673649493</social>
They found that some parts of the city have been subsiding by more than half an inch (over 2 centimetres) each month. While this is imperceptible for the people living there, it can cause damage to infrastructure, particularly underground such as the Metro.
A visual example is the Angel of Independence, a famous landmark in the Paseo de la Reforme, built in 1910 to commemorate the first century of Mexican independence, which has needed to add 14 steps to its base, because the land around it is gradually sinking.