Welcome back. I’m Adeline Atlas, 11-time published author, and this is the Depopulation Series — Are We the Last Biological Humans?

In this video, we’re expanding our lens. We’ve been focusing on the slow disappearance of biological humans—on fertility collapse, synthetic reproduction, and the fading presence of natural birth in a world increasingly designed for machines. But what if I told you the disappearance wasn’t just biological? What if it was geographic? What if not just people, but entire cities, are scheduled for extinction?

Because they are.

We are not only witnessing the phasing out of humans—we are witnessing the vanishing of the very ground beneath our feet. Some of the most iconic cities on Earth—New York, Miami, Jakarta, Venice, Bangkok—are literally sinking. Some are collapsing under their own weight. Others are being swallowed by rising seas. And none of this is centuries away. In many cases, the damage is already irreversible. The countdown has begun.

Let’s start with the basics. More than 800 million people globally live in coastal cities less than 10 meters above sea level. And many of those cities are sinking—not metaphorically, but physically. Some of them are dropping at a rate of several centimeters per year. Combine that with rising seas due to melting glaciers and thermal expansion, and you get a dual threat: land is going down while water is coming up.

In the United States, Miami is ground zero. Built just inches above sea level, the city faces chronic flooding even on sunny days. These so-called “king tides” are now common. Saltwater seeps into storm drains, flows up through sidewalks, and corrodes building foundations. In some neighborhoods, streets are now being raised, and pumps run 24/7 just to keep the water at bay. But it’s a losing battle.

According to NOAA projections, large parts of Miami-Dade County could be underwater by 2060. That’s not 200 years from now. That’s within the lifetime of today’s children. Miami isn’t just a city. It’s an economic hub, a tourist magnet, a cultural symbol. And in just a few decades, it could be unlivable.

Then there’s New York—specifically, Manhattan. Home to over 1.6 million people and billions of dollars in real estate, it too is sinking. Not just from sea level rise, but from the sheer weight of its skyscrapers. According to a recent U.S. Geological Survey study, the city is sinking at an average rate of 1 to 2 millimeters per year. Combine that with sea level rise—which is accelerating—and you have a timeline of encroaching catastrophe.

Manhattan is essentially built on bedrock and fill. Much of the southern tip of the island—Battery Park and beyond—is land that was added artificially. That land is less stable and more vulnerable. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, we saw what just a few feet of storm surge could do. Subway systems flooded. Hospitals lost power. Billions in damage happened in a matter of hours.

Now fast forward. With sea levels projected to rise up to 2 feet by 2100—and possibly more under extreme models—lower Manhattan may become partially submerged. Infrastructure costs will skyrocket. Insurance will vanish. And at some point, the cost of maintaining the city will outpace its value. This is how collapse begins: not with fire, but with water—and economic retreat.

Let’s look globally. Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital and one of the largest cities on Earth, is quite literally drowning. The city is sinking at an average rate of 10 centimeters per year—one of the fastest in the world. Some districts have sunk more than 4 meters over the past decade. Why? Excessive groundwater pumping combined with poor infrastructure and rapid urban sprawl.

The Indonesian government has already announced that Jakarta is unsalvageable. The capital is being moved to a newly constructed city on the island of Borneo. Think about that. They’re not trying to save Jakarta—they’re abandoning it. An entire capital city, with over 10 million residents, declared unsustainable. That’s not climate fiction. That’s current policy.

Then there’s Bangkok, Venice, Alexandria, Dhaka, Lagos, and dozens of others—all sinking or flooding at accelerating rates. For some, it’s groundwater extraction. For others, it’s coastal erosion or subsidence from decades of urban expansion. The reasons vary, but the result is the same: uninhabitable zones where cities once thrived.

This raises a troubling question. What happens when cities die?

A city is not just buildings and streets. It’s history. It’s culture. It’s memory embedded in place. It’s where revolutions started, where music was born, where stories unfolded. What happens when all of that is wiped clean—by water, neglect, or design?

We tend to think of depopulation as a human issue. But it’s also architectural. Spatial. Urban. It’s not just who is disappearing—it’s where.

Take a moment to imagine a world where Miami is gone. Not just underwater, but culturally vanished. Imagine lower Manhattan too unstable to support buildings. Imagine Rome or Barcelona too hot for year-round habitation. Imagine Venice as a submerged monument—viewable only through glass-bottom boats. These are not science fiction scenarios. They’re already playing out, quietly, in real time.

And here’s the real twist: many of the same forces driving demographic collapse are also driving geographic disappearance. We’re witnessing a convergence of decline. Rising infertility. Collapsing birth rates. Rising seas. Collapsing cities. The human presence—biological, cultural, physical—is shrinking on multiple fronts.

Add to that automation and AI, and you start to see the larger picture. What replaces the people and the places when both vanish?

In rural Japan, abandoned schools are now staffed by robots and monitored by drones. In the Netherlands, rising sea levels are triggering massive relocations, while city planning AI helps map future infrastructure zones. In China, “smart cities” are being designed without children in mind—optimized for old age, surveillance, and digital productivity.

If human presence—organic, chaotic, emotional—is no longer sustainable, the solution becomes simulation, efficiency, and control. You don’t need children in the city if you have robots. You don’t need public parks if people rarely go outside. You don’t need schools if learning is virtual. You don’t even need cities if consciousness is cloud-based.

This is the direction we’re moving. Cities as servers. Neighborhoods as databases. Citizens as users.

But let’s not be too quick to embrace the inevitability narrative. These cities—Miami, Manhattan, Jakarta—they weren’t always at risk. Decisions put them here. Short-term thinking. Poor zoning. Ignoring nature. Betting against biology. The water was always there. It was our arrogance that made us think it wouldn’t matter.

And now, as populations shrink and land disappears, the temptation will be to replace rather than repair. To build vertically, digitally, synthetically—instead of investing in what made cities worth saving in the first place: people, culture, community.

Depopulation isn’t just a demographic crisis. It’s a civilizational retreat. It’s the shrinking of human presence from every arena—from biology, from reproduction, from space. And cities, once symbols of human triumph over nature, are now becoming symbols of our withdrawal.

So ask yourself: what do we lose when cities disappear?

We lose rituals. We lose landmarks. We lose the density of human experience. A child won’t just grow up without siblings—they’ll grow up without places. Without plazas, or subways, or neighborhoods filled with accidental magic. Because the places that created those moments won’t exist anymore.

And once they’re gone, we don’t rebuild them. We replace them—with code. With networks. With controlled environments designed to reduce risk, friction, emotion.

In other words, we replace them with not us.

So yes—this is depopulation.

Not just of the human body, but of the human world.

And if we don't shift course, we may live to see a planet not filled with vibrant cities and chaotic children, but with silent machines and optimized ruins.

We’re not just losing humans.

We’re losing the stage they stood on.

And when both the actor and the theater vanish, what story is left to tell?