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About this content
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The city that might have beenFrom 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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Meet Brazil's new megacity mayorsA multimillionaire reality TV star and an evangelical bishop might seem worlds apart. But the surprise new populist mayors of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo both signal a rejection of traditional leaders by cities mired in economic crisis
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in pictures
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The 10 most unaffordable citiesA 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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The city's forgotten neighbourhoodsGerman 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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The biggest city sinkholes around the worldAs 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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Behind the scenes in Vatican CityPhotographer 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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Detroit's custom cycles‘We take rusty old junk and we put love into it.’ The old Motor City has a unique style in bicycles these days: from fat wheels and fake fuel tanks to stretched cycles with powerful sound systems – and even a family-sized BBQ
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Life in an aircraft graveyardPhotojournalist Lauren DeCicca met three Thai families who have created makeshift homes from abandoned aeroplanes in a vacant lot in east Bangkok
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First class meal: could the US postal service deliver food to the needy?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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The future of the US-Mexican border: inside the 'split city' of El Paso-JuárezOne has been called the world’s most violent city. The other, the safest in its nation. Schoolchildren commute daily between the ‘binational’ cities of Juárez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas – but with Trump in office, will border divisions grow?
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How a design competition changed the US approach to disaster responseNate Berg tells the story of Rebuild By Design, a competition – and now its own organisation – based on taking a more proactive approach to disaster response in cities; but how far can you prepare for the effects of climate change?
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People power in Puerto Rico: how a canal community escaped gentrificationHow 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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Waria at twilight: the remarkable old age home for trans JakartansPhotographer Elisabetta Zavoli spent years getting to know a famously standoffish community – who eventually granted her unprecedented access
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The city that many hajj pilgrims don't seeAs 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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The people who live in Tokyo's net cafesHow 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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How beautiful Beirut is becoming a rubbish tipProtesters parody tourism video by juxtaposing images of Lebanon’s beauty spots with the reality of the country’s garbage crisis
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Stik in Shoreditch: the artist’s hidden tribute to a sold-off LondonThe 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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Artist Doris Salcedo on Bogotá: 'The forces at work here are brutal'Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo takes us on a tour of Bogotá and her studio
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The residents holding out against gentrificationA 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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Toronto's test case for public-private gentrificationOnce notorious for bedbugs and crime, the Regent Park social housing development has been transformed with a $1bn revitalisation – and more than a few luxury apartments. But has it managed to avoid social cleansing?
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get involved
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What's air pollution like where you are?We’d like to find out about air pollution in cities around the world. How does it affect your daily life? Share your views, experiences and photographs
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'Night walks are a great tonic for urban stress'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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Can you identify these world cities from space?Astronauts on the International Space Station took these images of cities at night
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Your memories of Camden MarketAs Camden Market faces redevelopment, readers share their stories and memories of London’s famous hub of counterculture – from punks in the 70s to Roundhouse squat raves in the 90s – and how the place has changed
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Can the city recapture its 1950s pedal power heyday?Poet Philip Larkin described Hull as ‘very nice and flat for cycling’ – and in the 1950s a third of the population rode regularly. It’s still flat, so why is this pioneer cycling city back-pedalling?
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Can Jakarta find an alternative to the car?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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Bikes outnumber cars for the first time in CopenhagenDenmark’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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Will the US ever kick the car habit?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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$40bn to save Jakarta: the story of the Great GarudaForget 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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Inside Makoko: danger and ingenuity in the world's biggest floating slumMakoko 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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A history of cities in 50 buildings – interactiveFrom 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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Story of cities #3: the birth of Baghdad was a landmark for world civilisationThe 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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Story of cities #5: Benin City, the mighty medieval capital now lost without traceWith 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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Story of cities #32: Jane Jacobs v Robert Moses, battle of New York's urban titansWhen 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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Story of cities #41: Soul City's failed bid to build a black-run suburbia for AmericaCivil 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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China's Pearl River Delta, then and nowThe 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 citiesAffordable 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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Subterranean London: the hidden labyrinth underneath the streets of the capitalUnderneath 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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London mayor launches unprecedented inquiry into foreign property ownershipExclusive 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
Urban public art Can it be more than a developer’s decoy strategy?