cities
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Columbus's big idea to relieve a congested downtownColumbus is the first major US city to give downtown workers free public transport passes regardless of who they work for, and whether they intend to use them. Can the programme change the mindset of this car-centric city?
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The angry millennials with a radical housing solutionThey see themselves as progressive housing activists. Critics call them stooges for luxury developers. Meet the new band of millennials who are priced out of cities and shouting: ‘Yes in my back yard’ -
Turin's balcony concert is under threatA Turin couple have organised free concerts from their balcony since 2011 but, despite their popularity – and Turin’s cultural reputation as ‘little Berlin’ – some people just want to reduce the noise
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in pictures
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London's markets 100 years agoThe Gentle Author pieces together photographs from the archives of the Bishopsgate Institute – from Billingsgate and Covent Garden, to Clare and the Hay Market
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A brief history of revolving restaurantsFrom Seattle’s Space Needle to London’s old Post Office Tower, via Liverpool, Dallas and Jaipur, restaurants have rotated at the top of spaceship-like buildings since the 1960s
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Ice lollies highlight Taiwan's contaminated waterwaysStudents from New Taipei City collected samples from urban rivers, creeks and ports which they then froze in moulds and preserved in resin. ‘We hope when more people see this they can change their lifestyles,’ said one of the group
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Photographer captures symmetry of city facadesInstagrammer Roc Isern shows another side to Barcelona’s architecture by capturing the beautiful geometric shapes and patterns of the city’s buildings
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The urban surrealism of Alex ChinneckHis melting houses and floating building have earned the British sculptor a reputation as a master of urban illusion. As his first-ever permanent work, Six Pins and Half a Dozen Needles, debuts at Assembly London, he tells us how he walks the fine line between architecture and sculpture
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Elliott Erwitt's lost shots of PittsburghYears before he found fame as a Magnum photographer, Elliott Erwitt was commissioned to document the city of Pittsburgh. Many of the images he took as a 22-year-old lay forgotten for decades, but have now been compiled in a book
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The slow lane: Dutch app allows elderly to 'hack' traffic lightsWith sensors and smartphones to make roads more flexible, Tilburg is addressing the question: how can a city become safer for less able residents?
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A garden bridge that works: how Seoul succeeded where London failedSeoul’s ambitious Skygarden – which revives a disused elevated 1970s highway with 24,000 plants – is opening
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Anti-smog bikes: could pedal power clean China's polluted air?The bikes designed by Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde would suck in polluted air, using positive ionisation to purify it, before releasing it back into the atmosphere
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Three tales of Mogadishu: violence, a booming economy … and now famineSomalia’s capital is buzzing: estate agents thrive and it recently hosted a TedX conference. But Mogadishu is facing a fresh challenge as drought forces half a million people to seek aid. Jason Burke visits a growing camp on the outskirts
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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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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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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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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
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What happened to America's forgotten 1970s cycle boom?‘Bicycle madness’ once saw US bike sales outstrip cars, and spawned ambitious plans for 100,000 miles of cycle paths. Then the music stopped
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Can you guess the city from its bike lane map?Mapping company Bike Citizens has trawled its database of city cycle infrastructure to create these ‘naked’ cycle maps. Blue lines = protected bike lanes; grey lines = painted lanes. Can you identify the cities?
live weeks
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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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$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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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
Go with the flow The hypnotic beauty of public transport – mapped