With climate threats—hurricanes, floods, and tsunamis—becoming more frequent due to global warming, experts have offered a grim forecast: what would happen if New York suddenly became deserted.
If no one is left to sweep the sidewalks, weed Central Park, or maintain the power grid, nature will move in fast. Dandelions will sprout from cracks in the asphalt. Raccoons will settle in abandoned apartments. The city will plunge into darkness.
Sara Dern of Popular Science spoke with architects, urban ecologists, and futurists to build a timeline of the Big Apple’s decline without people.
The first month
If no one is available to service the electrical grid, the Big Apple will go dark within a few days. Without air conditioning and heating, mold will form on building walls, says architect Jana Horvat of the University of Zagreb in Croatia, who studies building deterioration.
Some fixtures, like billboards powered by solar panels or small wind turbines, will stay lit longer. But eventually they will go dark too—there will be no one to replace the LED bulbs.
Without electricity, the pumping stations that daily remove 13 million gallons of water from the subway will stop working. Water will flood the train tunnels. “Plants will start to grow there, and animals will settle in. The first to take advantage of the uninhabited area will be species that have already made the subway their home, such as rats, cockroaches, pigeons, and opossums,” says Horvat.
During the first month, the lawns of Central Park will become wild and unkempt. “When you stop mowing the lawn, you get a meadow,” said botanist Peter Del Tredici, a senior research associate at Harvard University and an expert on urban vegetation. Over the month, dandelions, ragweed, and yellow foxtail will sprout among the already knee-high grasses of New York’s iconic parks. In addition to herbaceous plants, new trees, shrubs, and vines will take over park spaces, Tredici says.
The first 10 years
Within a year without people, many buildings in New York will begin to deteriorate. “The glass facades will be the first to disappear,” says Horvat. Over the decades, even tempered glass on skyscrapers will crack. Water will seep through broken windows. “Apartments will turn into damp greenhouses, an ideal place for mosquitoes, water snakes, fungi, and reeds,” Tredici adds.
Without maintenance, asphalt streets and parking lots will deteriorate. Freeze-thaw cycles will create cracks. Water will seep into them, and moss will take hold. In 10 years, young trees may even sprout from damaged pavement.
The Statue of Liberty will also decline. Its copper cladding will begin to crack, allowing water to damage its internal steel skeleton. “Steel is a strong material, but it is very prone to corrosion. And that’s bad for New York—a city made of steel,” Horvat says.
The first 50 years
Tredici predicts a new ecosystem will emerge in deserted New York over the coming decades: “It will be unlike anything that has ever existed in the world.”
A botanical expert points to Detroit’s long-term neglect as an example. The city is now overrun by wild apple trees—robust ornamental plants that originate in the mountains of Central Asia. “They can spread all over the world,” says Tredici. In New York, where there have been no people for half a century, wild apple trees in Central Park and Riverside Park will thrive among a young forest of honey locusts, oaks, and Norway maples, common street trees in the city. Curly nightshade and poison ivy will creep up the sides of buildings, while mosses and resilient weeds will blanket the upper parts of wind-battered skyscrapers.
More and more animals will treat Manhattan as home. At first, deer, rabbits, groundhogs, and wild turkeys will move in. They will be followed by larger predators—coyotes, bobcats, black bears, and copperhead snakes. Peregrine falcons, bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, and great horned owls will nest in former human dwellings. Meanwhile, feral cats will roam the abandoned upper floors of apartment buildings, hunting mice and birds.
The first 100 years
A century without people will likely mark the end of the skyscraper era. Experts say the newer spires will be the first to fall. Younger buildings rely on thin, reinforced steel skeletons encased in concrete. When the power goes out and water seeps through glass walls, high-rises will rot from the inside.
The Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building may be more resilient than many newer towers. Built to withstand significantly more weight than necessary, the steel frames of these older giants are reinforced with thick stone masonry and internal walls. These skyscrapers might stand for decades longer, but eventually they will fall too.
In a hundred years, New York could become a forest, Tredici says. A canopy of mature trees over 30 meters tall will replace skyscrapers. Concrete, one of the strongest building materials, will crumble. The carefully maintained river parks will turn into wetlands teeming with herons, turtles, beavers, and muskrats.
Even after skyscrapers collapse and underbrush takes over, parts of the Big Apple will persist, Horvat suggests. Marble lions will peek out from the forest floor. Ornamental details of granite fountains will jut out from soil and underbrush, while rusty steel beams will emerge from dense root systems. Even without people, New York will partially endure. This fragile legacy will either be discovered and studied by future generations or be forgotten.
