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podcast transcript
There are cities and towns all over the world. Some of these have become major urban areas of cultural and economic importance to their region, country, and even the world.
Most of these cities were chosen because they offer geographical advantages.
But the city’s founders unwittingly overlooked something that made its location a liability rather than an asset.
In this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily, learn more about the world’s worst-located cities and why they’re so bad.
I’ve been thinking about doing an episode on this topic for a while. Because it was really interesting.
None of the cities I would cover had any idea of the problems they would face when they were founded. In fact, the location choices of these cities were, in most cases, perfectly reasonable to begin with.
But over time, problems began to arise, especially as the city grew. In some cases, the problems have become so severe that significant investments have been required to resolve them.
What I won’t cover in this episode are cities that are vulnerable to natural disasters. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are uncontrollable and usually affect entire regions rather than specific cities.
Every city in Florida could be hit by a hurricane, and every city in Japan could be flattened by an earthquake.
By the end of the episode, you’ll realize that all the cities I cover share one thing in common.
So let’s start with the first city, which is located in a terrible place. Many of you are probably thinking: New Orleans.
At first glance, New Orleans appears to be in a great location. Many cities are located at strategic points on major rivers. Locating the city near the mouth of the Mississippi River seems like a good idea.
New Orleans was an important asset to both France and Spain and was the culmination of the Louisiana Purchase. Its strategic value made it a target in the War of 1812 and the American Civil War.
The problem isn’t with the cities on the Mississippi River. The problem lies in the specific location chosen: New Orleans.
New Orleans has one of the worst urban geographies in the world because it is naturally wet, floods regularly, and is trying to occupy land that is slowly disappearing.
Much of New Orleans was built on soft delta soil created by the Mississippi River. These sediments are young, loose, water-rich, and naturally compacted over time. When heavy buildings, roads and infrastructure are placed on top of it, the land becomes compressed.
Large areas of New Orleans were historically swamps or wetlands. When engineers finished draining these wetlands to develop nearby areas, the organic soil was exposed to the air, dried, decomposed, and shrunk. The land, once a spongy swamp, was drained and literally lost elevation.
Groundwater movement and regional subsidence add to the problem. As a result, some areas have sunk significantly over the past century, leaving parts of the city below sea level.
To make matters worse, New Orleans is located between several major bodies of water, including the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain, surrounding wetlands, canals, and the Atlantic Ocean. Water can threaten a city from multiple directions at the same time.
Because some areas are below sea level, precipitation cannot simply drain away by gravity. Instead, water is often pumped mechanically through one of the world’s largest municipal pumping systems. Streets can quickly become flooded when pumps fail, power goes out, or floods occur due to heavy rain.
Levees and flood walls are essential but imperfect. We need to prevent river flooding, storm surges, and lake water. This creates an ongoing engineering burden. Walls, gates, pumps and canals all require maintenance and upgrades.
A catastrophic example was Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It wasn’t just the rain that caused the disaster, but the failure of levees and floodwalls combined with the storm surge. Many parts of the city are filled like bowls.
New Orleans will continue to sink into the future. On average, the city is sinking about 5 to 6 mm per year, but some areas of the city are sinking at a rate of 20 to 30 mm per year.
It is entirely possible that some areas will be abandoned in the future simply because protection is too expensive.
The following poorly located cities may seem like the exact opposite of New Orleans, but they actually have the same problems: Mexico City.
Mexico City was originally founded as Tenochtitlan by the Aztecs in 1325. It was located on an island in Lake Texcoco. The site was chosen because of its defensive advantages, access to the lake’s resources, and its consistency with religious prophecies that marked the site as sacred.
Its causeways, canals, and island agriculture, known as chinampa agriculture, made it one of the most impressive cities in the world before the Spanish arrived.
After the Spanish Conquest, colonial authorities viewed the lake as an obstacle and a threat. Floods regularly affected the new colonial capital, so they began large-scale drainage projects to divert water out of the basin through tunnels, canals, and later modern drainage works. Over the centuries, much of the lake system has disappeared.
That decision created several long-term problems. First, much of the city was built on soft lakebed sediments. When those sediments were saturated with water, they were more stable.
As the lake was drained and later groundwater was pumped out, the clay soil was compacted and shrunk. This is why large parts of Mexico City are sinking unevenly, damaging buildings, roads, pipes and historic structures.
Second, the city lost its natural water storage system. The lake once absorbed rainfall and seasonal runoff. Without it, there are fewer natural places for water to spread, causing heavy rains to cause flooding, and during dry seasons, cities face water shortages and must import or pump water from aquifers.
Third, lake drainage has disturbed the local ecology and climate. Wetlands have disappeared, dust has increased, and natural groundwater recharge has decreased.
It’s a similar problem to New Orleans, but the cause is completely different.
Mexico City is sinking at different rates in different areas, so there is no single figure for the entire city. While some areas are relatively stable, others are among the fastest sinking urban areas in the world.
In many areas of metropolitan areas, subsidence is typically measured at 5 to 20 cm per year (about 2 to 8 inches per year).
In the worst affected areas, built on top of old lake beds, studies have recorded rates reaching 30 to 50 centimeters per year (about 1 to 1.5 feet per year) during certain periods.
Sinking is not the only problem. When distant seismic waves reach the valley, soft water-rich sediments act like gelatinous bowls, slowing the waves and greatly amplifying their motion.
Tremors can last longer and be much stronger than in nearby areas on harder ground. That’s why earthquakes that occurred far from the city, such as the 1985 earthquake, caused extensive damage to Mexico City even though the epicenter was hundreds of miles away.
Smog and pollution also collect in the valley where Mexico City is located. Additionally, temperature inversions further exacerbate the problem. Cooler air can become trapped beneath a layer of warm air, which acts as a lid to trap pollutants close to the ground.
Because cities receive strong sunlight at high altitudes, trapped emissions can react chemically to form ozone and photochemical smog.
The city with the next poor location is jakarta, I have a similar problem.
Jakarta’s combination of low altitude, flooding rivers, coastal exposure, unstable terrain and extreme population pressure makes it one of the worst urban locations in the world.
Jakarta lies on Java’s northwest coast on a flat deltaic plain where numerous rivers empty into the sea. Because most of North Jakarta is below sea level, heavy rain, river flooding, and tidal flooding can threaten the city at the same time.
During the rainy season, heavy rains can fall upstream and within the city, overwhelming drainage systems and flooding nearby areas.
The ground beneath Jakarta is mostly composed of geologically recent river deposits, making it soft and prone to subsidence. For decades, many residents and businesses relied on artesian wells because piped water service was inadequate.
Pumping water from these sediments would cause parts of the city to sink dramatically. In some northern regions, land has dropped so much that flood risk has worsened each year.
Due to its coastal location, the city is exposed to sea level rise and storm surges. If the land itself sinks, even a small rise in sea levels becomes significant.
Jakarta’s problems were so severe that the Indonesian government decided to move the capital to Nusantara on the island of Borneo.
Jakarta grew organically over time and then became a mess. I like most of Indonesia, but Jakarta is one of my least favorite cities. Nusantara offers Indonesia a new beginning in a better location with fewer earthquakes and volcanoes.
The last city I want to discuss is in a very different location, but it also has water issues. Tehran.
Tehran lies at the foot of the Alborz Mountains on a semi-arid plateau. Naturally, the city depended on seasonal snowmelt, valleys, springs, and underground aquifers.
Historically, Iran used qanats, gently sloping underground tunnels, to bring groundwater from the mountains to settlements.
That old system has been overwhelmed by modern growth. Tehran has grown into a metropolis of over 10 million people, with a demand for water for domestic, industrial, and landscaping purposes that is far greater than what the natural world can support.
The city now relies on dams, reservoirs, pipelines and groundwater pumping. Recent droughts have caused Tehran’s main reservoirs to rapidly shrink and officials have warned of rationing and severe shortages.
One solution Tehran has used to solve its water problem is to pump groundwater from aquifers beneath the city. Aquifers are not huge underground lakes. It is a layer of sediment that contains water in its pores and spaces. Removing water faster than rainfall and recharging it by snowmelt compacts sediments.
As a result, Tehran faces the same problems as all the other cities I mentioned in this episode, but for different reasons. It’s subsidence.
Tehran is sinking at an alarming rate. But because Tehran faces water shortages, it also faces a unique problem: sinkholes.
Tehran has experienced numerous random sinkholes that appear out of nowhere and completely destroy buildings and streets.
Like Mexico City, Tehran is also prone to earthquakes. If foundations, pipelines, subway tunnels or buildings are already weakened by subsidence, even a moderate earthquake can cause much more damage than usual.
Experts warn that land deformation could damage roads, waterways, gas networks and structures before an earthquake occurs.
Moreover, there is a water shortage in Tehran. In late 2025, officials warned that water levels in Tehran’s reservoirs had fallen to critically low levels and some areas were already experiencing pressure cuts and power outages.
Crisis is largely man-made. Decades of excessive dam building, inefficient agriculture that consumes most of the nation’s water, infrastructure leaks, water price subsidies, and excessive groundwater pumping have drained aquifers faster than they can be refilled.
Iran has regularly discussed moving its capital from Tehran to somewhere else because of all the problems.
The main concept was to create a new administrative capital in the Makran region on Iran’s southern coast near the Gulf of Oman, potentially around Chabahar.
Supporters argue that coastal capitals could have better long-term access to water, more room for growth and stronger trade links via sea transport.
Of course, there are cities with poor locations. Las Vegas is a great example that I covered in a previous episode. Deserts are bad places for cities.
But all four cities I cover in this episode are slowly sinking. Because the problem is literally the ground beneath their feet.
