Category Archives: Cities

How apartheid killed Johannesburg’s cycling culture

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Racial segregation meant cycling lost status in South Africa earlier and more intensely than in the rest of the western world

“The writer counted, in the space of only four minutes, 93 native cyclists riding past the Astra theatre,” wrote a journalist for the Star newspaper in July 1940. Standing almost 80 years later on the same corner of Louis Botha Avenue at the same time and day of the week – 6.30pm on a Monday – it is hard to imagine. The theatre is long gone and not a single cyclist is to be seen on the car-choked thoroughfare.

What happened to Johannesburg’s once vibrant commuter cycling culture? The dominance of the automobile marginalised the bicycle in many cities around the world through the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s but that process was accelerated in South Africa by apartheid. When policies of spatial segregation forcibly moved black people to faraway townships at the periphery of the city, the distance between work and home increased dramatically and cycling collapsed as an everyday practice.

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Dublin disappoints: what happened to city cycling’s great hope?

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In 2013 the Irish capital was ranked among the world’s top 20 bike-friendly cities, but only a small part of the promised cycle network was ever built

One sunny May afternoon in Dublin, as the Spice Girls prepared to kick off their Spice World 2019 tour at Croke Park stadium, the coaches bringing their fans unwittingly sparked another reunion – the city’s cycle activists.

It had been two years since the direct action group I Bike Dublin had mobilised to protect cycle tracks from car parking – uniting around twice a week under the hashtag #freethecyclelane – but as police officers directed coach drivers to park in the bike lane by Dublin Bay, blocking the track, the protesters were back.

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Google sister company releases details for controversial Toronto project

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Stakeholders say unanswered questions remain over scale of Sidewalk Labs’ hi-tech redevelopment scheme for city’s waterfront

The Google sister company behind a controversial, hi-tech redevelopment scheme for a swath of Toronto’s waterfront has released the first detailed outline of an ambitious project, but stakeholders say that unanswered questions remain over data collection and the scale of the plan.

The 1,500-page plan unveiled in Toronto on Monday reveals that Sidewalk Labs intends to spend C$1.3bn (US$900m) on the project that will involve “raincoats for buildings”, heated and illuminated sidewalks, affordable housing, tall timber structures and innovations to support sustainability and environmentalism.

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Humans v the city: the staggering scale of Chongqing – in pictures

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Chongqing’s population is estimated at just below 10 million but that rises to more than 31 million if the built-up surroundings are included. Belgian photographer Kris Provoost finds that in a city so large, individuals can get lost

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Istanbul’s hipster exodus: city dwellers head for the country

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High unemployment and living costs are driving people from the metropolis – but some rural residents aren’t happy about the new arrivals

Su Ava has been up since 5am. There have been new lambs to check on, goats, cats and dogs to feed, beehives to inspect, orders to fill, and she has also made a visit to her under-construction workshop.

Her current life making and selling cheese, honey and tahini in Turkey’s beautiful Çanakkale region could not be more different to her old one in Istanbul. The work can be exhausting but, Ava says, she would not give it up for anything.

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Ten cities ask EU for help to fight Airbnb expansion

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Cities say short-term holiday lettings market is contributing to soaring long-term rents

Ten European cities have demanded more help from the EU in their battle against Airbnb and other holiday rental websites, which they argue are locking locals out of housing and changing the face of neighbourhoods.

In a joint letter, Amsterdam, Barcelona, ​​Berlin, Bordeaux, Brussels, Krakow, Munich, Paris, Valencia and Vienna said the “explosive growth” of global short-stay lettings platforms must be on the agenda of the next set of European commissioners.

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Shanghai Sacred: inside China’s religious revival – photo essay

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Photographer and anthropologist Liz Hingley uncovers the spiritual landscape of China’s largest city, revealing the spaces and rituals of this cosmopolitan megalopolis that is home to 26 million people – and to religious groups from Buddhism to Islam, Christianity to Baha’ism, Hinduism to Taoism

  • Shanghai Sacred is at the Victoria Art Gallery & Museum at the University of Liverpool until 26 September as part of LOOK Photo Biennale, the forthcoming book will be published by GOST in November

By ritual, heaven and earth harmoniously combine

For the last thirty to forty years China has been undergoing one of the great religious revivals of our time. Alongside the country’s rapid pace of development, the search for meaning and celebration of the Sacred are shaping China’s future in new and significant ways.

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How a small Turkish city successfully absorbed half a million migrants

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Gaziantep has grown by 30% due to newcomers fleeing the crisis across the border in Syria, but remains a model of tolerance and pragmatism

Imagine you live in a medium-sized city such as Birmingham or Milan. Now imagine that overnight the population increases by about 30%. The new people are mostly destitute, hungry and with nowhere to stay. They don’t even speak the language.

Then imagine that instead of driving them away, you make them welcome and accommodate them as best you can.

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‘This is everyone’s problem’: protests fail to save Taipei veterans’ village

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Fewer than 30 of 879 villages built to house nationalist KMT soldiers and their families remain in Taiwan. After a lengthy battle, Daguan is to be demolished this week

At 22, Cynthia Tang was one-third the average age of the other people crowded into the abandoned Taipei storefront that served as the office of the Daguan Anti-Eviction Movement.

Looking fervently through the frames of her large round glasses, Tang, a student at the prestigious National Taiwan University, addressed the small crowd. “Two of our student activists have been arrested,” she said. “Now the government is suing them. This is not only their problem – this is everyone’s problem.”

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The year of Akira: how does 2019 Neo-Tokyo compare with today’s city?

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From architecture to highways and the Olympic stadium, how does reality shape up against Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 animated dystopia?

It’s 2019 and Tokyo is a sprawling megalopolis preparing for the 2020 Olympics. The city is crowded, fraying at the edges. The young are aimless and underemployed, obsessed with cars and clothes. Cynical new religious movements are on the rise. Motorcycle gangs race at night on the expressways. There is a worrying trend of militarism after years of peace. The government is showing signs of corruption. And everyone seems terrifyingly eager to ignore the lessons of a recent nuclear catastrophe.

The real city of Tokyo and the imagined Neo-Tokyo of the 1988 anime film Akira are nearly indistinguishable. 2019 is the “year of Akira”: the date the apocalyptic science fiction film was set, a couple of decades after a mysterious nuclear-esque disaster had wiped out the original city.

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Schoolgirls for sale: why Tokyo struggles to stop the ‘JK business’

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The persistent practice of paying underage girls for sex-related services, known in Japan as the ‘JK’ business, has seen charities step in where police have come up short

On a humid Wednesday night the streets of Kabukicho, Tokyo’s most famous red light district, hum with people. Some are tourists, here to gawp and take selfies, but others are customers. Adverts for clubs flash and sing and girls dressed as maids hold signs offering deals for local bars.

In a grubby shopfront a perky cartoon featuring a cute Mr Men-style creature offers part-time work. The ad, which has an alarmingly catchy jingle, doesn’t specify what the work is, but it doesn’t need to: the answer is all around us on the brightly lit billboards advertising the charms of male and female bar hosts.

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The Tokyo neighbourhood where people come to disappear

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For hundreds of years people have come to Sanya in search of labouring jobs, shelter and a sense of belonging – but the area is changing fast, and its residents are struggling to adapt

At first sight, Sanya looks much like any other Tokyo suburb: well-appointed homes, supermarkets and fast-food restaurants. In the distance, soaring above the rooftops and mesh of overhead power lines is the unmistakable shape of the Tokyo Skytree.

But its proximity to the ultra-modern landmark is deceptive. Older men in well-worn tracksuits, baseball caps and plastic slippers clutch cans of early-afternoon chu-hi alcopops, and dozens of no-frills hostels advertise rooms with easily the lowest rates in the city – clues to Sanya’s status as a Tokyo neighbourhood like no other, but one that is struggling to adapt to irresistible change.

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Game of thrones: commuter sells seat on crowded Tokyo train

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Novel wheeze to profit from packed trains latest in long line of creative ways to deal with Tokyo’s long commutes

Every morning, millions of Tokyoites cram into overcrowded trains across the world’s largest city. Most must stand, often squeezed uncomfortably together. So, earlier this month, one enterprising commuter came up with a novel wheeze to profit from the situation.

His morning journey ran from the suburb of Chiba into central Tokyo – a long trip for which he was almost always guaranteed to get a seat. So he put that seat up for auction – for 2,000 yen (£14.50). He named the car, and the time of the train, and asked buyers to show him proof of payment on their mobile phone.

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Has Tokyo reached ‘peak city’?

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You could argue that the world’s biggest city has hit a sweet spot: a flatlining population, pervasive transit and little gentrification. But is ‘peak city’ even possible – and where does Tokyo go from here?

Tokyo is often described as crowded, mushrooming, figuratively bursting at the seams. Except, in many ways, it’s not.

Unlike many megacities, the world’s largest metropolitan area has largely stopped growing, either in land or population. Where Mumbai, Lagos or São Paulo continually sprout new informal neighbourhoods that are constantly outstripping the ability of the city to catch up, Tokyo’s urban planning and services more or less seamlessly encompass the central wards and the neighbouring cities of Kawasaki, Yokohama, Chiba and Saitama that form its unbroken metropolitan area.

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A city built on water: the hidden rivers under Tokyo’s concrete and neon

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More than 100 rivers and canals flow beneath Tokyo, but from the ground it’s hard to notice them. Why has the city turned its back on water?

Of the near-endless flow of people over the busy Shibuya scramble crossing every day, few realise that beneath their feet is something else flowing, unseen and unnoticed: the crossing of two ancient rivers, the Uda and the Onden.

Beneath all the concrete and neon, Tokyo is a city built on water. It is the reason the Japanese capital’s 37 million citizens are here at all. From fishing village to seat of political power, canny water management was a key driver of the city’s extraordinary growth.

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‘There are almost no women in power’: Tokyo’s female workers demand change

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Japan has a 27.5% gender pay gap and ranks just 110th in the world for gender equality – but social change is slowly happening

Last week, after Yumi Ishikawa’s petition against being forced to wear high heels at work went viral around the world, responses ranged from solidarity – with some cheering Ishikawa and denouncing “modern footbinding” – to surprised disappointment. In 2019, in a liberal democracy such as Japan, could the issue of women’s rights still be stuck on stilettos?

But the global spotlight on the hashtag #KuToo (a pun on a word for shoes and a word for pain) may have obscured what’s really happening in Japan. “It’s so trivial,” says one senior female publishing executive, who wished to remain anonymous. After all, on the streets of Tokyo, there is a growing movement for real change for women, not merely more comfortable footwear.

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