cities
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Why do so many disabled people cycle in Cambridge?Riding a bike may be easier than walking for two-thirds of disabled cyclists, but they often remain invisible to society. Many don’t realise that more than a quarter of disabled commutes in this university city are made by bike
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‘Does Hull have a future?’ City built on a flood plain faces sea rise reckoningWith 90% of Hull standing below the high-tide line, its devastating recent floods were a sign of things to come. Can the UK’s 2017 city of culture be retrofitted against disaster – or should its people think about moving on? -
Six objects to define the London of 2017From a crammed tube carriage to a jar of diesel fumes, here are six items to sum up life in the capital for future museum-goers
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in pictures
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Brutalist treasures under threatAs London’s Robin Hood Gardens ( pictured) is destroyed despite a high-profile campaign to save it, we look at some cherished examples of modernist architecture from the 50s, 60s and 70s
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The best urban photographyA sun-baked Niemeyer treasure, a decaying Montana schoolhouse and a scary manmade cave are just some of the striking pieces shortlisted for the 2017 Art of Building photography awards, run by the Chartered Institute of Building. The winner will be announced in January
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The DIY district ruled by womenThey’ve survived single parenthood, housing shortages and a devastating fire to build what they have today: Ocupação Esperança, a space in São Paulo where women are in charge and the poor are protected
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São Paulo in the 1940sSwiss-born Hildegard Rosenthal fled the second world war to become a pioneering photojournalist in Brazil. Here’s a selection of her historic, unstaged shots taken on the streets of São Paulo
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Palermo teens pump up the veloBici Palermo Tuning – a group of teenagers from the Sicilian capital – spend anything up to €1,300 customising their bikes with car batteries and multiple speakers to develop thunderous sound systems. The police are not impressed
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Soviet-era sanatoriums of the StansWith decades-old wallpaper, mosaics glorifying workers and treatments such as ‘electrical hot chairs’, the sanatoriums of Central Asia are a door to another time
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‘The bayou's alive’: ignoring it could kill HoustonAmerica’s fourth largest city is built on an ancient river network that flooded catastrophically after Hurricane Harvey. With 400,000 homes in the watershed, achieving resilience is the Texan boom town’s greatest challenge
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What would an earthquake-proof city look like?It is cities where the most lives can be saved in earthquakes – here are their smartest ideas so far
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Portraits of the 'periferia': 'The pulse of São Paulo comes from its periphery'From the 16-year-old mother who occupied a school, to the cleaner who opened a nightclub, it’s often women who are leaders on the city’s embattled outskirts
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O efeito Amazônia: como o desmatamento está deixando São Paulo sem águaHá dois anos, uma seca desencadeou violência, saques e ‘estados de calamidade’ oficiais pela metrópole, com o Exército de prontidão para intervir. Agora, novos sinais sugerem que a história poderia se repetir – e apontam para um surpreendente responsável
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City: the remarkable urban photographs of David Levene
Award-winning photographer David Levene has revealed an unparalleled cross-section of the urban 21st century over more than a decade documenting how people live and work in 70 cities
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The radical theatre in the heart of Crackland
As police yesterday yet again applied brute force to the residents of São Paulo's 1,000-strong encampment of addicts, a group of artists is trying something wildly different
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Can Lakshmi find clean water in Bangalore?Once known as the City of Lakes, urban sprawl has destroyed 85% of Bangalore’s fresh water and pollution has ruined much of the rest. Can Lakshmi and her mother find clean water today?
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How bad is Delhi's air? We strapped a monitor to a rickshaw to find outSuresh 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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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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Revealed: the insidious creep of pseudo-public space in LondonJack Shenker reports on a new culture of secrecy and control in public spaces, where private security guards can remove you for protesting, taking photos ... or just looking scruffy
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Corbyn joins calls to reclaim UK pseudo-public space from corporate ownersLabour leader among those voicing concern after Guardian revealed secretive world of privately owned public spaces in London
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These squares are our squares: be angry about the privatisation of public spacePublic space is a right not a privilege; yet Britain is in the midst of the biggest sell-off of common space since the enclosures of the 17 th and 18 th century
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Pseudo-public space: explore the map – and tell us what we’re missingGuardian Cities and the Greenspace Information for Greater London (GiGL), have created the first comprehensive map of pseudo-public spaces in the UK capital. We’re looking for your help to make it better
get involved
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Urban memories: share your old photos of cities around the worldFrom lost buildings to transformed neighbourhoods, share your pictures and memories of the changing landscapes of cities with GuardianWitness
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Your stories of life in polluted citiesReaders 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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Residents of China's growing cities discuss life amid changeFrom 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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Can you guess the city from its skyline?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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Is Paris's seminal bike share scheme out of date?Ten years ago, Vélib revolutionised Paris and inspired the world. But a new operator, higher prices and a hi-tech competitor have shaken its confidence
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Why Britain's 1960s cycling revolution floppedSquint at Stevenage’s extensive 1960s protected cycleway network and you could be in the Netherlands – except for the lack of people on bikes. So why did the New Town’s residents choose the motor car over the bicycle?
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Can cyclists and driverless cars ever co-exist?Driverless cars appear unstoppable – except of course you can simply walk in front of one and force it to brake. Could this conundrum eventually mean a return to a dystopian world of segregated urban highways?
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Oslo's car ban sounded simple enough. Then the backlash beganWhen Oslo decided to be the first European city to ban cars from its centre, businesses protested. So the city did the next best thing: it banned parking
live weeks
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Resistance! São Paulo's homeless seize the cityLike New York in the 1980s and Berlin in the 90s, the occupation movement in São Paulo has exploded into one of the most dynamic forces in Brazil
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A ghost city in the sand comes to lifeMountains 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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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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Affordable 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 EastThe truth about property developers: how they are exploiting planning authorities and ruining our cities
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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
Accidentally Wes Anderson: Instagram finds stylised symmetry in real cities