All 28 of America's Biggest Cities Are Sinking. Houston Leads

A 2025 Virginia Tech study using satellite radar found all 28 of America's most populous cities sinking, with Houston dropping faster than 4 millimeters a year. The research, published in Nature Cities in May 2025 by Leonard Ohenhen and Manoochehr Shirzaei, used InSAR data from 2015 to 2021 to measure ground movement across cities with populations above 600,000. Eight cities averaged more than 2 millimeters of sinking per year, with Seattle, Columbus, Denver, Chicago, and New York tied in the study's top group before Houston, Memphis, and Las Vegas emerged as the fastest. In Columbus, Denver, and Chicago, glacial isostatic adjustment—the earth still rebounding from ice sheets that melted thousands of years ago—drives much of the subsidence at 1 to 3 millimeters annually. Houston leads because groundwater extraction squeezed clay layers in its aquifers, a process that doesn't reverse even after pumping regulations took effect in 1975, and 42 percent of the city now sinks faster than 5 millimeters a year as extraction shifted north and west into Montgomery County.