The flamingo population of India’s largest city has tripled. Is it thanks to sewage boosting the blue-green algae they feed on?
There is an air of anxious excitement among the urban professionals and tourists on board our 24-seater motorboat as we enter Thane Creek.
A chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” breaks out as we spot the visions in pink we came to see – hundreds of flamingos listlessly bobbing in the murky green water – followed by the furious clicking of cameras.
Continue reading...A recent protest by street vendors was met with a violent crackdown – but was their eviction necessary to ‘order’ the city’s public space?
An unsettling quiet has fallen over a stretch of the usually noisy Feria de San Telmo Sunday market. Artisans should be lining these cobbled streets selling intricate macrame jewellery and Argentinian leather purses to crowds of tourists from all over the world. Deafening percussion bands, accompanied by dancers, and street vendors selling empanadas and arepas should be making their way up the road.
The market is one of the largest handicrafts and antiques fairs in Buenos Aires, popular with tourists and locals alike, and runs the length of Defensa, the main thoroughfare in the barrio of San Telmo.
Continue reading...Government invades modern-day gold-rush town in Amazon in its biggest ever raid on illegal gold mining
Located along a jungle highway in the Amazon around 60 miles from the nearest city, La Pampa was a place you entered at your own risk. At night it was a riot of neon lights and pulsating cumbía music from “prostibar” brothels, frequented by roaming groups of men flush with cash. Neither authorities nor outsiders – and particularly not journalists – were welcome.
This modern-day gold-rush town, home to about 25,000 people, was both a hub for organised crime and people trafficking and a gateway into a treeless, lunar landscape pocked with toxic pools created by illegal gold mining, stretching far into one of the Amazon’s most treasured reserves.
Continue reading...Fascinating interactive graphic shows changes in the globe’s 10 most populous cities from 1500 to 2018
This compelling interactive “bar chart race” shows the top 10 most populous cities in the world from 1500 to 2018.
“In the early 1500s most people lived in the east, either the east of Europe and north Africa or the east of the world itself in India and China,” says John Burn-Murdoch, who created the interactive for the Financial Times.
Continue reading...The LSE Cities Urban Age Programme has created density diagrams showing the number of people living in each square kilometre of a 100km by 100km area for cities around the world. Can you identify them?
Which city is this?
Dhaka
Chicago
Shanghai
Lagos
Which city is this?
London
Paris
Rome
Madrid
Which city is this?
Buffalo
Accra
Marseilles
Brisbane
Which city is this?
Islamabad
Kabul
Karachi
New Delhi
Which city is this?
Mumbai
Cairo
Jakarta
Hong Kong
Which city is this?
Los Angeles
Vancouver
Cape Town
Taipei
Which city is this?
Recife
Newcastle
Havana
Dar es Salaam
Which city is this?
New Orleans
Malaga
Melbourne
Rio de Janeiro
Which city is this?
Toronto
New York
Sao Paulo
Barcelona
Which city is this?
Buenos Aires
Mexico City
Nairobi
Beijing
10 and above.
Well done!
3 and above.
Oh dear
4 and above.
Not bad
2 and above.
Oh dear
0 and above.
Oh dear
1 and above.
Oh dear
LSE Cities says: “Residential density measures how closely people live together. More compact cities have higher densities, while cities that sprawl and have wide open spaces between buildings have lower densities. The pattern of streets, squares and urban blocks – as well as how many people live in residential units – determines the density of a city alongside the height of individual buildings.
Continue reading...The Hong Kong MTR’s ‘rail plus property’ model keep fares cheap and makes the company completely self-sustaining. Could loss-making metro systems in other cities learn lessons?
“Once we build the railway, the value of land rises and we capture the increase in value,” says Jacob Kam, managing director and soon-to-be chief executive, of Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) Corporation.
Related: Hong Kong faces commuter chaos after rare train collision
Continue reading...Bridges are often defining urban features – but what if your city had chosen one of these designs instead?
Continue reading...Gender-specific “Frauenticket” will be 21% cheaper than usual and available on 18 March in stunt to flag German pay gap
Women travelling on Berlin’s metro, buses or trams will pay 21% less than men next Monday in a stunt to boost the visibility of Germany’s gaping gender pay gap.
The city’s public transport operator, BVG, said its “Frauenticket” will be available on 18 March only, to mark Equal Pay Day in Germany. Under the slogan “Mind the pay gap”, it said its cut-price ticket was intended to flag the 21% difference between men and women’s average earnings, one of the biggest gender pay gaps in Europe.
Continue reading...Cities have long sought to preserve historic views of landmarks or mountainous horizons. Architect Tom Brigden maps out protected ‘viewing corridors’ in cities from London to Vancouver
Value in the View is published by Riba
Continue reading...‘Video clubs’ and watching on mobile is taking over from the joyful experience of going to the cinema
Three riders on horseback canter up a dusty road in Ouagadougou to deliver the top prize, a golden horse, to the awards ceremony of Africa’s most important film festival. Dressed head to toe in glitter, film-themed wax fabric and flowing silks, celebrities of African cinema settle down, Rwanda’s national ballet performs and the presidents of Burkina Faso, Rwanda and Mali look on from golden chairs as gongs, cheques and conical Fulani grass hats are handed out for more than three hours.
The pan-African film and television festival of Ouagadougou (Fespaco) is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and the ceremony was the culmination of two weeks of screenings, parties and debates over the future of African cinema.
Continue reading...Athens’ tourism boom capitalises on building regulations relaxed in the economic crisis
The 10-storey hotel at 5 Falirou street in Athens was always going to stand out. Built to impress, its handsomely modernist wood-panelled facade added a contemporary touch to the streetscape of the otherwise lacklustre popular Makriyanni area beneath the Acropolis.
But as local residents watched it go up over the winter, they became ever more concerned. By February, when it had reached 31.5 metres, the hotel was the tallest building in the neighbourhood and had started to impede what had once been uninterrupted views of the Parthenon and the 5000BC monument’s fortified walls.
Continue reading...In January, an isolated reserve declared a state of emergency over dangerously poor housing conditions. A resident has now died – what will it take for meaningful change?
A caravan of trucks carrying material for new homes is currently winding through northern Ontario, on its way to a remote Indigenous community. The trip along a seasonal winter road is a slow one, passing over frozen lakes and muskeg, and involves cutting down trees along the way for the vehicles and their trailers. Members of the isolated reserve, Cat Lake First Nation, say there is no time to waste.
Home to roughly 700 people, the reserve declared a state of emergency in January over excessive mould, leaky roofs and other poor housing conditions. The crisis then deepened when one of its residents, 48-year-old Nashie Oombash, died from respiratory issues. Her family blamed the death on extensive mould problems in her home.
Continue reading...Is it Vilnius, Seoul, Moscow or Kiev? And what do alcohol consumption statistics tell us about a city and its culture?
“Drinking is seen as a sign of masculinity in Kiev,” says Daria Meshcheryakova. “People don’t understand how a grown man could be sober in the evenings or on holiday – they would wonder what was wrong with them.”
Last year the Ukraine capital’s city council voted to ban shops from selling alcohol between 11pm and 10am in an attempt to curb excessive all-night drinking.
Continue reading...Denmark’s capital wants nine new islands to form a sustainable leisure and tech hub – but not everyone is convinced
In the winter fog and drizzle, it is hard to imagine Køge Bugt beach park packed with families, joggers and swimmers. But in summer this artificial beach is one of Copenhagen’s favourite spots. Backed by scrubby dunes and lagoons teeming with birds, the only thing spoiling the idyll is the power station that looms to the north.
“This view is something that is really part of my childhood,” says Arne Cermak Nielsen.
Continue reading...From Bruce Lee’s mansion to Bauhaus-style Central Market, HK Urbex are documenting the fast-changing city’s fading heritage
“We just had to hop the fence. It was kind of easy,” says Ghost, co-founder of HK Urbex, as he explains how the urban explorer group gained access to the former mansion of late martial arts superstar Bruce Lee.
Wearing masks to protect their identities, the group circled the abandoned home in Hong Kong’s upscale Kowloon Tong neighbourhood three times to make sure the coast was clear. As one member stood out front to keep watch, another leapt over the back fence. Twenty minutes later they were out again – another successful urban mission accomplished.
Continue reading...Analysis of air pollution data finds that 64% of cities globally exceed WHO guidelines
Twenty-two of the world’s 30 worst cities for air pollution are in India, according to a new report, with Delhi again ranked the world’s most polluted capital.
The Greenpeace and AirVisual analysis of air pollution readings from 3,000 cities around the world found that 64% exceed the World Health Organization’s annual exposure guideline for PM2.5 fine particulate matter – tiny airborne particles, about a 40th of the width of a human hair, that are linked to a wide range of health problems.
Continue reading...E-bikes now outsell standard bicycles in Netherlands, with quality prized more than price
In what was already a long-running purple patch for the Dutch cycle industry, domestic sales records have been broken in the last 12 months despite spiralling prices, as technological developments push the standard push-bike into the annals of history.
Related: The Guardian view on e-bikes: British cycling needs this boost | Editorial
Continue reading...Freelance photographer Kate Stanworth has been following a Buenos Aires murga group for 10 years, as they perform in an energetic street carnival that is little known beyond Argentina
Argentina’s charismatic capital, Buenos Aires, might be more famous for tango, steak and football than colourful carnival parades. However, murga – a feisty, home-grown form of street dance and percussion performed during carnival season, once unfairly thought of as only performed by drop-outs and drunks – has flourished in recent years, providing a source of pride, happiness and salvation for the predominantly working class families that dedicate their lives to it.
Continue reading...Brutalist masterpieces (or eyesores, depending on your point of view) face the wrecking ball in cities around the world
Continue reading...Concrete is everywhere, but it’s bad for the planet, generating large amounts of carbon dioxide. Creative alternatives are in the pipeline
They call them plyscrapers: the sudden emergence of tall buildings constructed almost entirely from timber. Vancouver, Vienna and Brumunddal in Norway have all claimed recently to have the tallest wooden building in the world, and now Tokyo has its own designs on the informal title.
Making buildings from wood may seem like a rather medieval idea. But there is a very modern issue that is driving cities and architects to turn to treated timber as a resource: climate change.
Continue reading...