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Don’t spit, don’t play loud music, don’t drive on the pavement … Farmers moving to the former ghost city of Kangbashi are getting lessons in how to be urbanites
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Che Guevara kicked around Baraka, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the 1960s. Now it is a thriving trading city – but still lacks a basic digital map. Guardian readers are setting out to change that
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Enthusiasts travel miles to photograph faded adverts for products and businesses that no longer exist - symbols of defiance against the city’s relentless progress
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From Ronald Reagan’s ‘tear down this wall’ speech to David Hasselhoff’s bizarre ‘looking for freedom’ serenade, countless urban myths have sprung up about who was really responsible for the fall of the wall. Do any have any merit?
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Can this one-industry town find a way to rescue its losses? A man called Guardian still thinks so ...
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Three years after the revolution, the state is trying to cleanse central Cairo – clashing with street-sellers, revolutionaries, politicians, property investors and artists
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To celebrate World Cities Day, we’re putting 36 terrified contestants from around the world in the ‘hot seat’ to tell us their city’s best idea – and why other cities should adopt it. Cheer them on!
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Adam James Smith visited the Ordos region to see how the government's relocation plan is affecting people living in the countryside around Kangbashi - and to find out how those who have already moved to the 'ghost city' are coping with city life. This video contains excerpts from his soon-to-be-released documentary, The Land of Many Palaces
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Lurking in the back alleys of New York, perched above the busy streets of Cairo and clinging to the grimy bricks of London, ghost signs provide an ephemeral link to a city’s past
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We put 36 cities from around the world in the ‘hot seat’. See how they got on …
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City links: the best city stories this week take a look at a guerrilla parking sign project in New York, imagine London’s disused tube stations as community hubs and explore Mussolini’s secret underground bunkers in Rome
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By the end of next year one-in-three of the world’s 100m+ buildings will be in China, as its state-orchestrated urbanisation drive prompts a megacity building bonanza
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Twenty five years after its fall, more pieces of the Berlin wall are scattered across the globe – from Seattle to South Korea, Cape Town to Canberra – than remain in the city itself
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Where do the happiest, least stressed, most satisfied Londoners live? What’s the busiest station? Do football fans support their local team? These questions and more are explored in London: The Information Capital
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Lurking in the back alleys of New York, perched above the busy streets of Cairo and clinging to the grimy bricks of London, ghost signs provide an ephemeral link to a city’s past
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Oliviera’s repurposed plywood construction hoardings wind their way around the university contemporary art museum’s white columns in a tangle of roots
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Halloween special: Photographer Seph Lawless – whose eerie images of abandoned shopping malls we featured this summer – has explored houses blighted by tragic histories in his new book, 13: an American horror story
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Berlin’s modern face – glass skyscrapers, busy roads, overgrown lots – shows little trace of its old scar. Our Street View expert takes us back to Checkpoint Charlie, the death strip ... and the wall’s glorious fall 25 years ago next month
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The American photographer spends 15 hours perched on a rooftop or crane photographing each city from one camera angle through night and day, before months in the studio painstakingly blending them into one seamless image
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Reinforced doors, metal bunks and hot food – with nuclear winter an unlikely prospect, Geneva’s fallout shelters have thrown open their doors to welcome the homeless
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The copycat city in north-eastern Liaoning province is just the latest example of China’s fondness for replicating Europe’s greatest architectural hits
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From Calgary’s space-age Peace bridge to Eindhoven’s floating roundabout and the Copenhagen apartments with a cycle path straight up to the 10th floor, Gavin Blyth’s Velo City highlights some of the world’s best cycling infrastructure
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From British prisoners of war being marched through Bruges to anti-aircraft guns on the Eiffel Tower and new recruits in Toronto, our Street View specialist takes us back 100 years
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The theme of this year’s competition – Cities at Work – challenged photographers from around the world to capture the beauty and day-to-day reality of working life
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The group of vulnerable young mothers who occupied vacant flats after being told they would be rehoused outside London by Newham council have now left the Carpenters estate. Photographer Jess Hurd visited the protesters this week to document their campaign
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Architectural, fine art and news photographers shed light on contemporary and traditional solutions to the problem of climate change in densely populated coastal regions
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Oxford academic and ‘place hacker’ Bradley Garrett has spent years exploring the capital’s hidden depths. His latest book, Subterranean London, is published by Prestel
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Guardian Cities asked you to share your photos of the most silly, confusing and dangerous signs near you via GuardianWitness. Here’s a selection of our favourites
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The Barbican Centre’s new Constructing Worlds exhibition brings together 18 photographers who have changed the way we view the urban world around us, from the early skyscrapers of New York to the Torre David vertical slum in Venezuela
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As the global parliament of mayors prepares to kick off, which civic leaders would you want in your deck?
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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
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Amy Sacka’s 500-day photo essay exploring Detroit is an attempt to discover the meaning of home. Raised in the suburbs, where the ruined Motor City was a place to be feared, returning was a personal challenge
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Vladimir Antaki has been documenting shopkeepers all over the world. His project was born from his desire to document and pay tribute to these ‘guardians of urban temples’ that we meet everyday without really noticing
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Forward-thinking Hari Krishna chairman marks Diwali by lavishing almost 500 cars and more than 200 apartments on his long-serving staff
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As part of our Stormproofing the City series, Klaus Jacob, who predicted the devastation wrought by 2012 storm, tells Lilah Raptopoulos why city planners could be making things worse, not better, for future generations
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Welcome to our new series, where a NYC resident makes sense of the network protecting her from the next Sandy-sized storm … by interviewing the people preparing for it
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Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $130m plan to upgrade New York’s neglected parks has put the spotlight on a commissioner who likes to go incognito to see how people use ‘his’ green spaces. Emma Brockes joins him
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Ageing populations are increasingly prone to feeling lonely and isolated in modern, anonymous cities around the world. A new app from Barcelona might have the answer
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We invited readers to join our experts in a live webchat on whether UK cities and towns are ready for the threat of flooding
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From jokes between friends to public health messages, a traditional phrase is sweeping though Indian communities worldwide, thanks to Facebook, WhatsApp and a good dose of humour
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City links: This week we were at the SXSW Eco conference in Austin, Texas, thinking about the future of cities amid climate change. Here are some of the best of the (many) conclusions
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Western audiences are being sold a shiny new version of the Colombian city – but one academic says his research has uncovered a culture of exclusion and a mirage of social harmony
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Mature cities can adapt and new cities can design themselves to be climate resilient from the start. Alongside unavoidable expenditure come potentially lucrative benefits for innovative businesses providing solutions – and the prize is a big one
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Our urban leaders’ belief in autonomy as the ultimate goal must be unset, writes Richard Sennett. The seductive idea of a place controlling its own fortunes is out of date
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The development of engineered timber could herald a new era of eco-friendly ‘plyscrapers’. Christchurch welcomed its first multistorey timber structure this year, there are plans for Vancouver, and the talk is China could follow
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Architectural, fine art and news photographers shed light on contemporary and traditional solutions to the problem of climate change in densely populated coastal regions
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The future of food: A new Dutch scheme aims to distribute local fare more sustainably, unclog the streets and reduce Amsterdam’s 15 million annual food miles
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We asked readers to make three-minute films about their cities for the Barbican’s City Visions film season. In this first of three updates, here are some of our favourites
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As Christ Church Cathedral remains gripped in a battle between modernity and heritage, a bold new structure is coming to symbolise progress as the city rebuilds after the earthquake
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Gujarat city on India’s west coast is preparing to cope with twin disasters brought on by rapid growth and global warming
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Tune in to watch the session exploring urban resilience and digital civic engagement from the Making the City Playable conference in Bristol - live
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Analysis of initial applications for the Rockefeller Foundation’s global resilience project reveals a tendency among cities to underestimate their exposure to hazards
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We're getting to know the local urban voices who cover their home cities most insightfully. Here's our initial list of bloggers, from Detroit to Addis Ababa
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Placemeter pays New Yorkers to suction-cup an old smartphone to their window, then records and analyses what’s happening outside
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Duncan A Smith of UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis talks us through his new data visualisation platform, LuminoCity3D, and the insights it offers into population, employment, transport and the environment
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Potholes kill, cost billions to fix and are the focus of endless apps and initiatives (yes, there’s a UK Pothole Fund). Enter the brave urban warriors fighting to slay this original urban bugbear for good
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Solar panels embedded in the cycle path near Amsterdam could generate enough electricity to power three houses, with potential to extend scheme to roads
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From boardwalks to bridges, tunnels to cycle-friendly subways, you shared your experiences of the best urban bike infrastructure from across the globe
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From Calgary’s space-age Peace bridge to Eindhoven’s floating roundabout and the Copenhagen apartments with a cycle path straight up to the 10th floor, Gavin Blyth’s Velo City highlights some of the world’s best cycling infrastructure
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The PR war over Boris Johnson’s flagship cycling scheme risks impeding its progress
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The ‘rust belt’ city of Buffalo, New York is experiencing a renaissance after decades of decline. But while one half rises from the post-industrial ashes, large swaths of the other remain trapped in poverty and disrepair
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London could soon be home to the longest continuous, substantially segregated urban cycleway in Europe – but lobbyists are raising concerns about the impact on congestion, pedestrians and businesses. Do they have a point?
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The main political parties and 60 big employers support ‘Crossrail for bikes’ – yet behind the scenes there are intense efforts to poison the project, says Chris Boardman
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A huge number of the world’s most vulnerable human settlements have remained unmapped ... until now. Enter an unprecedented plan to map the world’s forgotten places
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Bike messengers were once the fastest way to get a document across a city – until the arrival of email. Yet even today, in a world with superfast broadband, a few of us still eke out a living, writes cycle courier Emily Chappell
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Tens of thousands of people were trapped in Yumen after officials swiftly locked down the city when a man died of plague. While the crisis has since passed, it highlights China's severe approach to the threat from disease
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An urbanist’s tour of South Korea, day 4: How the little-known industrial city of Changwon learned to love the bicycle so much they’ve even written a song about it
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The two-lane elevated orange Cykelslangen – the latest of the city's continuous and safe bike lanes – is a joy to ride as it wriggles its way over the harbour
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Amsterdam-based Peerby enables users to share items – a hammer, a tent, a badminton racket – in the way neighbours did before cities made us more anonymous
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The city boasts the highest concentration of millionaires in Britain and an unemployment rate of just 2% – but wage inequality and astronomical rents have heightened calls for change
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Peer-to-peer car sharing, borrowing from neighbours and connecting with fellow cyclists: which gets your vote?
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Now we’re focusing on cyclists and pedestrians – what daily dangers do you face and what changes to road and pavement layouts do you want to see? Use Street View to show us
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City links: From urban anxiety to pictures of stairs (yes) to shipping container 'ghettos', here are some of the web's best city stories this week
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After much agonising, the list of 10 creative concepts still in the running to be named best new mobile city app of 2014 has been revealed. As ever, it's an impressively eclectic, global list
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Architecture and design critic Rowan Moore, himself a cyclist, asks whether our dreams of a Dutch-style bike culture have materialised
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Oliver Wainwright: The 2020 Olympic stadium has faced two years of widespread criticism and budget cuts. Now prominent Japanese architect Arata Isozaki has launched a blistering attack on the designs
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Adam James Smith visited the Ordos region to see how the government's relocation plan is affecting people living in the countryside around Kangbashi - and to find out how those who have already moved to the 'ghost city' are coping with city life. This video contains excerpts from his soon-to-be-released documentary, The Land of Many Palaces
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Investigation launched after two bolts fall from London skyscraper but developer insists structural integrity is unaffected
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Solar panels embedded in the cycle path near Amsterdam could generate enough electricity to power three houses, with potential to extend scheme to roads
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Lurking in the back alleys of New York, perched above the busy streets of Cairo and clinging to the grimy bricks of London, ghost signs provide an ephemeral link to a city’s past
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Julia Higginbottom: My region should be celebrated. We shouldn’t be stifled by Westminster or the self-interest of dinosaurs in local government
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Oliviera’s repurposed plywood construction hoardings wind their way around the university contemporary art museum’s white columns in a tangle of roots
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Staff at publisher Condé Nast among first to move into 104-story centrepiece despite ongoing political fight about how best to rebuild Lower Manhattan
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If you live in Cairo, share your photographs and experiences of how the city is changing – and what impact regeneration is having on its local communities
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Renee Bergere of Great about Perth talks bad drivers, rainbow lorikeets and the ‘Fremantle Doctor’ - a natural cure for pollution
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Novels by Pushkin, Chekhov and Tolstoy available for free download by commuters
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San Pedro Sula, Honduras, is the most dangerous city on the planet – and experts say it is a sign of a global epidemic
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A huge number of the world’s most vulnerable human settlements have remained unmapped ... until now. Enter an unprecedented plan to map the world’s forgotten places
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Pushed into a corner by soaring prices, greedy landlords and a cap on benefits, one London council has embarked on a daring set of untested policies to provide more public housing
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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
Cycling the city What Copenhagen can teach us about cycling