cities
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Privatisation is stripping cities in Russia and Eastern Europe of their public assets, leaving a chaotic mix of advertising, dilapidation and new development
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Lee Kuan Yew’s vice-like grip on power helped create a byword for cleanliness, efficiency and safety. What lies beneath this ‘Disneyland with the death penalty’?
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Refuge cities In a country where xenophobia is increasingly rife, Poland’s longest-serving mayor is intent on building a safe haven for his city’s ‘invisible’ immigrants. After all, he says, integration is in the town’s DNA
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Across London, social housing is being demolished to build luxury apartments for global investors. Only eight years since the financial crash, Anna Minton marvels at how, once again, we’ve let the property market spiral out of control
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The planners of independent India’s new capital failed spectacularly in their attempt to create a poverty-free utopia. Their legacy is a sprawling city awash with slums and hampered by bureaucracy
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BusinessGreen: Tech capital is first major US city to require all new buildings of 10 storeys or under to have solar panels
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The Long Read: A former murder capital of the US, Camden, New Jersey has created its first cold case squad. Can solving old killings help restore an embattled community’s trust in law and order?
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From deadly protests to billion dollar insurance schemes, we look at the impact of extreme weather and what the world’s fastest growing major economy is doing about it
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As self-driving vehicles edge closer to our roads, what does the new technology mean for services and businesses in cities?
in depth
the big picture
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In the unofficial capital of Transylvania, Mihail Onaca wanders the streets to capture the Romanian city’s magnificent windowframes and doorways
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From the Taksim Square and Nuit Debout protests to bank takeovers in Barcelona and women’s workshops in Delhi, the pressure for more inclusive cities is mounting. As the UN gears up for its huge Habitat III conference in October, will governments listen?
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Unaffordable housing, corruption, the lack of public space … can UN-Habitat improve the lot of the billions of people living in cities around the world? Mike Herd talks to Dr Joan Clos ahead of this year’s Habitat III summit
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The French capital is deeply divided along right-left lines, but November’s terror attacks have made Anne Hidalgo determined that it remain a city of ‘liberty, tolerance and humanism’. Kim Willsher shadows her for a day
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After the ruinous Hawke’s Bay earthquake, rebuilding a city in the midst of the Great Depression seemed impossible. But through artistry and enterprise, Napier became home to the highest concentration of art deco buildings in the world
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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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
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From regeneration and grassroots activism to privatisation and security, public space in Europe’s cities is shaped by a variety of urban developments. Share your stories of the changes you’re seeing with GuardianWitness
in pictures
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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
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Urban growth, sporting events, financial crashes and political turmoil have left a trail of city airports and airfields deserted around the globe. While some lie abandoned or face redevelopment, others are being creatively reused
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Photographer Laurent Kronental spent four years documenting the lives of older citizens living in the Grands Ensembles housing estates built around Paris after the second world war for his Souvenir d’un Futur project
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Photographer Berenice Abbott started Changing New York – her grand project to document NYC – in 1935, capturing shops and buildings before they were torn down. The photos are held in the archive of the New York Public Library
popular
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Thirty years on from The Smiths’ only UK No 1 studio album, how do the band’s legendary evocations of 1980s Manchester compare with life in the city today? There’s only one place to start …
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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 -
The heavyweight world championship showdown between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman electrified a city full of pride and promise in the early years following independence – and then the money ran out …
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What is life like in Mali’s ‘city in the middle of nowhere’? Guardian photographer Sean Smith recently spent a week there, meeting everyone from Timbuktu’s chief muezzin to its only DJ
Oakland's housing crisis: 'I’m the last one here. I don’t know if I can stay or go'