cities
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Expats constitute 90% of the population of Dubai, and when they move on they often leave everything behind – including their temporary pets
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Ultra-nationalist Buddhist group Ma Ba Tha has been spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric across Myanmar for years. Cosmopolitan Mandalay is at the heart of this hostility – which many fear is here to stay
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One year into South Sudan’s new transitional government, Juba is still struggling to cope with insecurity, poverty and conflict
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in pictures
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The world has become obsessed by pink hues, and architecture is no exception. So we gathered the best pictures of millennial pink buildings – from LA to Tokyo
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Jason Hawkes specialises in aerial photography and has flown across Britain capturing the country from above. His first book, London from the Air, was released 25 years ago; here he returns to the capital leaning out of a helicopter to photograph the city at night
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In 1950, India’s prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited the architect Le Corbusier to design a modernist city that broke with the country’s colonial past
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In an ongoing project, Guardian photographer Sarah Lee immerses herself in the world of London’s buses, capturing candid portraits of people during their night-time journeys
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Feike de Jong walked the entire perimeter of one of the biggest cities in the world, to capture the strange scenery of the fringes of Mexico’s capital
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Found in 1922, Deo Gratias is the oldest photography studio still in operation in Accra
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As councils struggle with cuts, one Lancashire city adapted a pioneering grassroots approach from America to tackling inequality and keeping profits local
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The Sicilian capital is using millions of euros seized from crime bosses to fund regeneration – though the wounds inflicted by the Cosa Nostra may never heal
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Unlike Guangzhou’s African community – who have faced prejudice and hostility – Yiwu’s foreign residents enjoy an ‘unusual freedom of worship’, with the municipal government even consulting international traders on city business
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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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In the heart of Malaysia’s towering capital lies tiny Kampong Bharu. But its markets are being razed and its residents evicted
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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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get involved
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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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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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From Hefei to Honghu, readers across China share their stories about how their cities are changing – and what the county’s rapid urbanisation means for them
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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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Seattle has become the first major US city to shut a public bike share scheme. Was it the helmet law … or the lack of cycle lanes and the city’s notorious hills and rain?
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Sadiq Khan made big promises to make London bike-friendly, and now it’s up to Will Norman to deliver. In a rare interview, the walking and cycling commissioner defends his plans
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New cycle-share firms in China allow you to simply drop your bike wherever you want. They have caused colourful chaos – and world cities could be next
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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?
live weeks
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Mountains have been flattened and villages bulldozed to build Lanzhou New Area in China’s wild west. Four years ago Tom Phillips met empty streets and an eerie hush, but now he finds this improbable desert mirage finally filling up
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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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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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From Jericho to Tokyo: the world's largest cities through history – mapped
This article is 5 months old
In limbo in Melilla The young refugees trapped in Spain's African enclave