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To highlight the dangerous air quality in the German city, which breached EU limits 25 times in January, two neighbours lodged a criminal complaint against city officials. Popular resistance to Stuttgart’s pollution problem is growing
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Tall walls, barred windows and armed security are increasingly common in the Venezuelan capital, where more and more Caraqueños avoid going out at night – travelling in convoy if they must leave home after dark
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in pictures
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The Philadelphia Electric Company built enormous metropolitan power stations at the turn of the 20th century. Now vacant and decaying, these buildings are a blight in the eyes of city planners and a beacon to urban explorers
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From the offshore Santa Monica freeway to a mini Las Vegas with pyramids and the Parthenon, Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell look at the LA that never happened
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A new survey ranks the affordability of ‘middle-income’ housing in 406 cities – and for the seventh year running, one stood above the rest
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German photographer Philipp Ebeling left behind familiar landmarks to travel to the forgotten locations where the city ceases to be the city
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As a huge crater opened up in the Japanese city of Fukuoka, we take a look at the largest urban sinkholes – from Guangzhou to Guatemala City
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Photographer Christian Sinibaldi was granted unprecedented access to the corridors of Vatican City. Over several months he gained the trust of those who work there, got to know the city’s inner workings, and captured scenes which are rarely seen by outsiders
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In January, 13 gangs met at a gym hall in Monterrey to sign a truce – the project of a former gang member who is showing that militarised police is not the only way to fight Mexico’s gang violence
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Infrastructure became a national talking point after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake devastated Christchurch in 2011, but were lessons learned? At three minutes past midnight on 14 November last year, Wellington found out
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Paris is sitting on an underground space 10 times the size of New York’s Central Park. Some 300km of tunnels and disused quarries are closed to the public, but could these spaces play a role in the city’s development?
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Students in St Louis propose to help millions of ‘food insecure’ people and reduce America’s mountain of food waste ... by piggybacking on the unused vehicles and offices of the United States Postal Service
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Suresh Kumar Sharma is an auto-rickshaw driver in Delhi, a city with some of the world’s dirtiest air – and where many locals don’t know how unhealthy the pollution really is
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Photographer Elisabetta Zavoli spent years getting to know a famously standoffish community – who eventually granted her unprecedented access
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As the hajj begins once again, Saudi artist Ahmed Mater has revealed unprecedented changes to the holy city – from flashy new hotels to the loss of priceless neighbourhoods
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How We Live Now: In Tokyo, commutes are so long, and apartments so small, that some people sleep in internet cafes – which offer showers, meals, clothes and everything you might need for a substitute home
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Protesters parody tourism video by juxtaposing images of Lebanon’s beauty spots with the reality of the country’s garbage crisis
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The street artist Stik set out to ask the denizens of Old Shoreditch how his new mural should reflect their gentrified neighbourhood
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How do you improve a neighbourhood without causing land prices to rise? Residents along a polluted waterway in San Juan set up a community land trust to help save their homes, as well as the environment
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A government-driven revitalisation project is turning public housing – including the waterfront Sirius building with its 90-year-old hold-out resident – into private developments. It is seen by some as ‘aggressive social cleansing’
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Readers shared their experiences of living in cities affected by air pollution – from the curse of the ‘Delhi chest’ in India’s capital to celebrating blue sky in Shanghai
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A city’s skyline can be its defining feature – from Sydney’s Opera House to New York’s skyscrapers – but can you identify places based on their skylines alone?
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Readers share their experiences of cities at night – from hearing panther screams in Prague to wandering through the hidden neighbourhoods of Seoul
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From lost buildings to transformed neighbourhoods, share your pictures and memories of the changing landscapes of cities with GuardianWitness
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Cardiff’s ambitious new cycling strategy aims to double the number of trips taken by bike, part of its ultimate goal to become Europe’s most liveable capital. But Cambridge, the reigning champ of cycling, won’t be beaten easily
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Attracted by the air-conditioning and the status, many of the 3.5 million people who commute into the hot and humid Indonesian capital come by car. With four hours in traffic not unusual, Jakarta is searching for solutions
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Denmark’s capital has reached a milestone in its journey to become a cycling city – there are now more bikes than cars on the streets. Can other cities follow?
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Motor City Detroit built the automobiles, oil capital Houston fuelled them and Los Angeles was carved up by freeways in their honour. Yet now all three cities are pushing walking, cycling and the use of public transport. So does this mean America’s love affair with the car is finally waning?
live weeks
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Forget Venice. The fastest-sinking city is the Indonesian capital, parts of which are dropping at 25cm a year. Can an outlandish plan for a giant seawall and luxury waterworld city in the shape of a mythical bird save Jakarta from drowning?
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Makoko is the perfect nightmare for the Lagos government – a slum in full view, spread out beneath the most travelled bridge in west Africa’s megalopolis. Yet this city on stilts, whose residents live under the constant threat of eviction, has much to teach
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From the 4,600-year-old pyramid of Zoser to the under-construction one kilometre-high Kingdom Tower – via the first London semi, Beijing’s old stock exchange and LA’s stacked freeway interchange – these 50 structures tell unique stories of our urban history
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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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With its mathematical layout and earthworks longer than the Great Wall of China, Benin City was one of the best planned cities in the world when London was a place of ‘thievery and murder’. So why is nothing left?
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When city planning supremo Robert Moses proposed a road through Greenwich Village in 1955, he met opposition from one particularly feisty local resident: Jane Jacobs. It was the start of a decades-long struggle for swaths of New York
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Civil rights activist Floyd McKissick dreamed of a southern utopia where the racially integrated community would be planned and managed by African Americans. Although the city was never completed, some traces remain
you may have missed
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The Pearl River Delta has witnessed the most rapid urban expansion in human history – a predominantly agricultural region transformed into the world’s largest continuous city. By revisiting the sites of rare archive images of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Macau from the 1940s through 1990s, our photographers have documented this staggering change
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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 -
Underneath the streets of the capital lies a hidden labyrinth of Victorian sewers. We’re going down 20 metres and back 150 years
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Exclusive Sadiq Khan tells the Guardian he will carry out ‘the most thorough research on this matter ever undertaken’ amid widespread concern over rising housing costs and gentrification
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Toronto's buried history The dark story of how mining built a city … and a nation