Category Archives: Cities

‘We live for gravity biking’: deadly sport is way of life in Medellín

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The risky hillside pastime – which sees people hurtle down steep inclines on weighted bikes at up to 77 mph – is providing kids in downtrodden areas of Colombia’s second city with an escape from their troubles

As the cable cars that connect downtown Medellín – Colombia’s second city – to the hillside slums pass overhead, a band of teenage cyclists have gathered at the side of the road. Vallejuelos is a downtrodden neighbourhood, rife with crime and unemployment, but “gravity biking” is helping some kids escape their troubles.

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Safe space: the new cinema welcoming women in male-dominated Kabul

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Cinema once thrived in Afghanistan until Taliban censorship. Now, new ventures are slowly reviving it

The majority of Kabul’s cinemas cater largely to audiences of young men, and tend to show Bollywood films produced in Pakistan and India. For some young Afghan men, the cinema is a rare occasion for public expressions of joy: audience members cheer on the films’ heroes and sometimes dance along.

For most women, however, fears of harassment in a male-dominated space have made cinemas feel unwelcoming.

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Is a huge Montreal building project pushing out Trudeau’s poorest constituents?

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Residents of city’s Parc-Ex district, one of Canada’s poorest areas, and part of Justin Trudeau’s own electoral district, say a new university campus is driving them out

Parc-Extension in Papineau, Quebec, is one of Canada’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhoods. Of the approximately 30,000 people who live in Parc-Ex, 61% were born outside Canada. The area is one of the country’s poorest: 43% of households live below the poverty line, perhaps a somewhat surprising fact given that it is also part of the riding (electoral district) represented by the Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau .

Despite being located in the centre of bustling Montreal, Parc-Ex feels isolated and is physically closed off from the rest of the city by borders on all sides. There’s a highway to the north, a large park to the east, train tracks to the south and a fence to the west, built by a posher neighbouring borough.

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Try before you buy: German city offers workers a free one-month stay

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Picturesque Görlitz is offering free lodging and studio space in exchange for feedback on what potential residents want from a city

Last year Eva Bodenmüller read about a city in eastern Germany inviting people to live there for a month for free. She and her partner Carsten Borck, an artist, knew they had to leave their residence in Italy soon and weren’t looking forward to moving back to their native Berlin.

“I thought: ‘Why not Görlitz?’” said Bodenmüller, a freelance journalist .

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‘It’s a beacon for the city’: inside the new New York library that cost $40m to build

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The project earned criticism for its price tag, but it is being seen as a positive sign for the health of New York libraries

Strategically positioned on the bank of the East River, across the water from the United Nations headquarters, New York city has a shimmering new addition to its skylines.

Unusually for such prime real estate set among parkland, panoramic views of Manhattan and convenient transport links, this $40m development in Queens is neither an upscale apartment block, exclusive members club or the offices of a huge corporation.

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Ancient Turkish town begins to disappear underwater – in pictures

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The small town of Hasankeyf, in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority south-east, is doomed to disappear in the coming months after being inhabited for 12,000 years. An artificial lake, part of the Ilısu hydroelectric dam project, will swallow it up. The huge dam, Turkey’s second largest, is being filled further down the Tigris River, despite protests that it will displace thousands of people and risks creating water shortages downstream, namely in Iraq. Residents are being moved from the ancient town to New Hasankeyf nearby, while historic artefacts have also been transported out of the area

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Which is the world’s hardest-working city?

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Tokyo may be the most ‘overworked’ city – but there are ways to measure how hard a city works other than simply totting up the overtime

In July 2013, 31-year-old Miwa Sado, a reporter for Japan’s national broadcaster NHK, was found dead in her Tokyo apartment. She had died from heart failure. It was later revealed that Sado had logged 159 hours and 37 minutes of overtime at work in the month before her death. Sado’s death was officially designated as a “death from overwork”.

So common are cases of people dying from overwork in Japan that the country has a special term for it, karoshi. The first case of karoshi was recorded in 1969; according to government data, Japan had 190 deaths from overwork in 2017.

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Hot properties: how Oslo went wild for floating saunas

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When the city’s first floating sauna was banned by port authorities, its owners took it on the run, sparking a public craze

It all began in September 2011, when Martin Lundberg sailed his boat into the marina in the fashionable Aker Brygge district in central Oslo, Norway.

A native of Malmö, Sweden, Lundberg had spent the summer on his boat moored off one of Oslo’s islands. He didn’t have a job, or a home other than the boat.

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Horrible bosses: masked activists publicly shame businesses in Bologna

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The anonymous members of Il Padrone di Merda (“crappy boss”) stage protests outside employers in the Italian city who are accused of exploiting their workers

On a warm summer afternoon in the Italian city of Bologna, a group of around 15 young people march through the crowded city centre to a high-end pastry shop in Strada Maggiore.

If employers are afraid of image damage, things can change

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Reclaimed lakes and giant airports: how Mexico City might have looked

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The Mexican capital was founded by Aztecs on an island in a vast lake. No wonder water flows through so many of its unbuilt projects

Ever since Mexico City was founded on an island in the lake of Texcoco its inhabitants have dreamed of water: containing it, draining it and now retaining it.

Nezahualcoyotl, the illustrious lord of Texcoco, made his name constructing a dyke shielding Mexico City’s Aztec predecessor city of Tenochtitlan from flooding. The gravest threat to Mexico City’s existence came from a five-year flood starting in 1629, almost causing the city to be abandoned. Ironically now its surrounding lake system has been drained, the greatest threat to the city’s existence is probably the rapid decline of its overstressed aquifers.

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‘Irrelevant’: report pours scorn over Google’s ideas for Toronto smart city

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Independent panel criticises Sidewalk Labs over ‘frustratingly abstract’ proposals for new tech-oriented neighbourhood

A controversial smart city development in Canada has hit another roadblock after an oversight panel called key aspects of the proposal “irrelevant”, “unnecessary” and “frustratingly abstract” in a new report.

The project on Toronto’s waterfront, dubbed Quayside, is a partnership between the city and Google’s sister company Sidewalk Labs. It promises “raincoats” for buildings, autonomous vehicles and cutting-edge wood-frame towers, but has faced numerous criticisms in recent months.

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Diesel cars emit more air pollution on hot days, study says

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Emissions rose 20-30% in Paris when temperatures topped 30C, raising urgent questions as the climate gets hotter

Emissions from diesel cars – even newer and supposedly cleaner models – increase on hot days, a new study has found, raising questions over how cities suffering from air pollution can deal with urban heat islands and the climate crisis.

Research in Paris by The Real Urban Emissions (True) initiative found that diesel car emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) rose by 20% to 30% when temperatures topped 30C – a common event this summer.

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Barcelona’s car-free ‘superblocks’ could save hundreds of lives

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Report predicts radical scheme could cut air pollution by a quarter as other cities including Seattle prepare to follow suit

Barcelona could save hundreds of lives and cut air pollution by a quarter if it fully implements its radical superblocks scheme to reduce traffic, a new report claims.

A study carried out by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health calculates that the city could prevent 667 premature deaths every year if it created all 503 superblocks envisaged in its initial plan – up from the current six schemes.

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Capital in waiting: trepidation in corner of Borneo earmarked as the new Jakarta

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Plan formally announced in August will see 1.5 million people move to new capital, but residents and conservationists have expressed deep concerns

Sugio’s orchard is his life’s work and a great source of pride for the 79-year-old resident of Tengin Baru village in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan. The orchard sits back from the main road, which in places is no more than a potholed track that cuts through jungles and villages. The plot of land is tranquil and filled with birdsong.

For 42 years Sugio has cultivated his hectare, diligently planting a variety of colourful fruits and vegetables. He points out corn, durian, rambutan, pepper and sweet potato plots; ducks and chickens wander around in the afternoon sun. “We have everything we need here,” he says. “Our family can’t even eat everything before it spoils, so we sell it at the market. Our life is already perfect.”

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Driven to despair: road toll charges take centre stage in Norway vote

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Gilets jaunes-style movement has threatened to bring down national government

Regional elections in Norway on Monday are being billed as a referendum on the country’s environmental policies, with the country split over road toll rises that have already threatened to bring down the national government.

A sharp increase in motorway toll and congestion charges in recent years has helped fuel a political movement that is proving a threat to mainstream parties in a number of major cities.

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Sardine tins for the poor?: Barcelona’s shipping container homes

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Just a stone’s throw from La Rambla, the Spanish city is building 12 shipping container flats to help tackle its social housing crisis

Barcelona has begun installing its first shipping container homes just a stone’s throw from La Rambla, the famous thoroughfare in the city centre, in a bid to provide emergency housing for people who have been evicted or otherwise driven out of the neighbourhood by gentrification.

Work commenced last week on the 12 small apartments, which are being installed on Carrer Nou de Sant Francesc, a narrow street in the densely populated Ciutat Vella (“old city”) district.

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The soul of Perpignan: how a Gypsy community halted the bulldozers

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The French city wanted to demolish large portions of its St Jacques neighbourhood as part of a wider development plan. It had not reckoned with its residents

Photography by Jesco Denzel

Never schedule a demolition in St Jacques for the afternoon. Nothing much stirs in the morning in this mainly Gypsy neighbourhood of Perpignan, south-west France, but by 4pm on 27 July last year, when the diggers turned up at Place du Puig, the locals were up – and full of fire.

Sixty of them, furious at what they saw as mystifying recent demolitions in other parts of the neighbourhood, and worried about a conspiracy to force the Gypsy community out of the heart of Perpignan, refused to let the workman pull another lever.

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Athens police poised to evict refugees from squatted housing projects

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A self-governing community in central Athens which has helped house refugees is threatened by a government crackdown

It’s just after 5am in the central Athens neighbourhood of Exarcheia. A group of Afghans and Iranians are sitting down together for breakfast in the middle of the street, with a banner that reads “No Pasaran” (“They shall not pass”) strung between the buildings above their heads. They laugh and joke as they help themselves to bread and cheese pies from the communal table.

The public breakfast is outside Notara 26, a self-organised refugee accommodation squat. Since opening in September 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis, it has provided shelter to over 9,000 people. These ‘‘Breakfasts of Resistance” – held in the early hours when police-led evictions are most likely – have become daily events since Greece’s New Democracy government assumed office in July.

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Death, blackouts, melting asphalt: ways the climate crisis will change how we live

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From power cuts to infrastructure failure, the impact of climate change on US cities will be huge – but many are already innovating to adapt

Between record heat and rain, this summer’s weather patterns have indicated, once again, that the climate is changing.

US cities, where more than 80% of the nation’s population lives, are disproportionately hit by these changes, not only because of their huge populations but because of their existing – often inadequate – infrastructure.

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