cities
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City links: An unusual Berlin property map, Rotterdam’s floating forest and the fate of Delhi’s metro all feature in this week’s roundup of the best urban stories
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Major roads which get snarled in rush hour or after a few inches of snow could be potentially deadly in the event of a terrorist attack or superstorm. So what should a more resilient transport system look like?
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The grubby end of Oxford Street is being tamed but this isn’t regeneration, it is devastation. The human-scale buildings, Victorian music halls and alleyways survived road widening and the blitz, but they won’t survive Crossrail
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Photographer Jeffrey Milstein has taken stunning aerial images of public gathering places like Coney Island in New York and Venice Beach skate park in Los Angeles as part of his new work Parks and Recreation
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A certain watery obstacle in the north-east of England is not the only unlikely urban view to have caught the attention of the internet. Here’s a roundup of other city video streams (not puddles) to keep you riveted
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The grand bazaar in the Turkish capital is one of the world’s oldest covered markets. More than 250,000 people a day are thought to visit its 3,000-plus stalls
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Airbnb data reveals districts that have soared in popularity on the home-sharing site, with Osaka and Bangkok top of the list
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Phones have been placed in Belgian capital for residents to answer in the hope they can reassure potential overseas visitors
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Parts of the capital have already breached EU hourly limits for nitrogen dioxide pollution which causes thousands of premature deaths each year
in depth
the big picture
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The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat keeps tabs on skyscrapers under construction around the world. Of the 10 tallest due for completion this year, six are in China, two in Dubai and one each in Seoul and Moscow
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Coney Island has long struggled to beat the seasonal exodus and reinvent itself as a year-round resort. Could the unexpected popularity of its New Year’s Eve parties kickstart the transformation of one of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods?
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The Italian capital has a logistical nightmare: juggling ambitious restoration projects at the Colosseum and the Porta Maggiore basilica with trying to run and update the city – and all without a mayor. Can it cope?
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This week, New York and LA reacted very differently to the same bomb scare. So how does a city judge how seriously to take such threats – and is it really that easy to bring a major metropolis to a halt?
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The prevalence of lifestyle diseases such as type 2 diabetes is rising alarmingly in cities across the world. But the social factors driving this epidemic are complex and need our urgent attention
talking points
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Permanent walls were built to separate Catholic and Protestant districts of Belfast in the 1970s, and the city is still scarred by almost 100 of them. Defensive architecture, it turns out, is easier to build than tear down
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get involved
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We’ve stripped out the street names and lost the labels – but can you still recognise the cities from their aerial views?
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From noise and pollution to street harassment and anonymous crowds, readers share their experiences and thoughts on what makes cities stressful – and which places are the biggest offenders. Is it time to relocate?
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You shared your experiences, photos and memories of forgotten or unloved rivers in cities around the world, from Birmingham to Belo Horizonte
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From Bucharest to Birmingham, you shared your pictures and stories of overlooked, abandoned or unloved buildings in cities
in pictures
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In 1869, French artist Gustave Doré and British journalist Blanchard Jerrold began a landmark account of the deprivation and squalor of mid-Victorian London
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Ten years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, photographer Mario Tama of Getty Images returns to the city to document how things have changed
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No distraction is too bizarre when it’s in the middle of a roundabout. Here are some of the strangest and most beautiful examples, including from the hitherto-uncelebrated roundabout hotspot of Oman
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Urban growth, sporting events, financial crashes and political turmoil have left a trail of city airports and airfields deserted around the globe. While some lie abandoned or face redevelopment, others are being creatively reused
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Colin O’Brien has been photographing the lives of Londoners since 1948, capturing both change and continuity in the life of the capital. His book London Life records the final moments before transformation took place in the city
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From a fake underground grotto to giant bronze tulips, murals making statements on ecology to work by ‘the Swedish Banksy’, Stockholm’s metro stations are full of surprises. All photographs by Luis Rodriguez
popular
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The truth about property developers: how they are exploiting planning authorities and ruining our cities
Oliver WainwrightAffordable housing quotas get waived and the interests of residents trampled as toothless authorities bow to the dazzling wealth of investors from Russia, China and the Middle East -
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What is life like in Mali’s ‘city in the middle of nowhere’? Guardian photographer Sean Smith recently spent a week there, meeting everyone from Timbuktu’s chief muezzin to its only DJ
An insider's cultural guide to Muscat: steeped in heritage and tradition