cities
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Does real style come from a city with a rich manufacturing history (Milan), high-end designers (Paris), the avant garde (Tokyo) ... or is it found in more unlikely places?
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With development of London’s best-known riverside ruin finally under way, Peter Watts remembers what could have been – from a Noddyland theme park to a rubbish incinerator or Chelsea’s football ground
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Gretchen Peterson’s City Maps: A Coloring Book for Adults will no doubt take up all of an urban geek’s spare time, but can you recognise the cities from the book’s maps showing only outlines?
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Serbian DJ Tijana T takes us on a tour of her hometown, from its brutalist architecture to provocative theatre and shady redevelopment projects
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Imagine Palmyra rebuilt as if Isis had never arrived, or Kathmandu restored to its pre-quake glory. As the V&A’s special pavilion at the Venice Biennale shows, we now have the technology to create perfect copies of cities – but should we?
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He made a documentary about architecture in Nazi Germany and followed the Stalinist heritage trail. Now film-maker Jonathan Meades is tackling Mussolini – one fascist monument at a time
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The trio of reports commissioned by Boris Johnson provides food for thought for his successor Sadiq Khan
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The St-Henri neighbourhood has been the target of a series of vandalism cases, as new urban projects and high-end shops ‘reform the social fabric’
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Energy inefficient and substandard construction in developing countries locking the world into high greenhouse gas emissions for decades, warns Fatih Birol
in depth
the big picture
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From family boxing to food markets, Jens Schott Knudsen’s pictures of the Chinese capital after dark capture life in its streets and alleyways
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The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities programme has unveiled the final tranche of 37 cities it is helping to prepare for – and bounce back from – shocks and stresses such as flooding, terrorism, earthquakes and hurricanes
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Washington and Seattle, Nairobi and Lagos, Manchester and Belfast are all included in the final list of member cities as 100RC programme reveals it has had more than 1,000 applications since 2013
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When the Cheonggyecheon Stream replaced a traffic-filled stretch of elevated freeway with public space, water and vegetation it looked like a modern urbanist’s dream. The reality is more complicated, finds Colin Marshall
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His election as UK’s first black mayor was deeply symbolic. How does he plan to tackle Bristol’s growing problem with inequality – and its racist past?
talking points
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The foundation of al-Mansur’s ‘Round City’ in 762 was a glorious milestone in the history of urban design. It developed into the cultural centre of the world
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get involved
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From tackling isolation in Leicester to better footpaths in Dhaka, you shared your experiences of how cities could be improved for older generations
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To kick off our collaboration with the Young Urbanists, quizmaster Rob Cowan tests your city knowledge with questions straight from the group’s pub quiz
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Refuge cities Europe continues to be gripped by a refugee crisis, but forced migration is happening all around the world. We want to hear your first-hand accounts of migrating to a new city and how you’ve been received
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Readers from Istanbul, London, San Jose, Montreal, Newcastle and Buenos Aires share their experiences of neighbourhood change over the decades
in pictures
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When it opened in 1955, the Grande Hotel in the Indian Ocean city of Beira was one of the most luxurious in Africa. Photojournalist Fellipe Abreu documents the lives of the 3,500 people who now fill this long-closed hotel to capacity
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For 148 years the factory employed thousands of immigrants. When Williamsburg began to transform, as Lucio Zago tells in his forthcoming graphic novel Williamsburg Shorts, the workers weren’t going down without a fight
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Cities around the world have been designing outdoor gyms and play areas for older generations to improve fitness and wellbeing. Even non-specialist playgrounds are getting multi-generational. Play’s not just for kids...
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A new project by photographer Rory Gardiner and studio esinam highlights the subtle beauties hidden beneath the hard surface of London’s oft-maligned brutalist buildings, from the Barbican to the National Theatre
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In Africa, the beautiful game isn’t confined to the stadium: from city roads to markets to beneath giant flyovers, football belongs everywhere
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The Tiber’s banks provide an isolated ecosystem in the centre of the Italian capital. Photographer Luigi Pastoressa documents a riverside used by cyclists and street vendors, homeless people and artists, drug addicts and fishermen
popular
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Burma's bizarre capital: a super-sized slice of post-apocalypse suburbia
This article is 1 year old
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