Land subsidence affects urban areas worldwide. Sometimes it could be driven by intensive groundwater withdrawal to assure different urban needs and functionalities. Some of these urban areas have a long history of subsidence that covers almost a century. The aim of this paper is to present the evolution of several urban areas affected by land subsidence, the methods used to monitor vertical displacements along the decades in relationship to the groundwater extraction associated to the urban expansion, and the mitigation techniques used for countering the effects of intensive groundwater withdrawal. Even the originally applied subsidence monitoring methods (such as geometric levelling) are still very sensitive, in terms of time consuming, covered area, and financial effort, these methods might be complemented by new methods based on Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR). InSAR methods show also a significant progress during the last decades when considering the subsidence sensed order of magnitude.
Characterization of land subsidence induced by groundwater withdrawals in Wenyu River alluvial fan, Beijing, China