San Francisco leaning tower scandal turns political

San Francisco

FOR years, San Francisco was a famously low-rise city. Then came the tech boom, and the race was on to build the glass and steel edifices that populate the world's great cities. But in earthquake-prone San Francisco there is a catch: Many of the city's new skyscrapers are concentrated in a neighbourhood of squishy land reclaimed from the bay.

One of the new buildings, the 58-storey Millennium Tower, has now sunk by 40cm. Worse, the condominium building is sinking unevenly.

The scandal of the Millennium Tower turned decidedly more political on Tuesday when Aaron Peskin, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, told reporters that he had unearthed official documents showing that the city's building inspection department had raised concerns about sinking seven years ago, just before the building was to open…