Category Archives: Cities and development

World’s most violent cities: Medellín crime surge helps Latin America top list

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Region has two-thirds of world’s most dangerous cities, with Bogotá, Rio, Mexico City and San Salvador also named in study

When police found the body of Marcela Graciano, a 31-year-old Colombian DJ, last Thursday, the brutality of the crime shocked even them. Her body, found in a house in a suburb of Medellín – Colombia’s second city – revealed signs of torture and her hands had been tied behind her back.

“The body was in an advanced state of decomposition,” the local police chief, Col Rolfy Mauricio Jiménez, said. The Valle de Aburrá municipality has had 11 murders this year, authorities said.

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The big idea: how can we adapt to life with rising seas?

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Traditional defences may fail, and migration won’t be possible for everyone. But we may yet find more creative ways to live


We have passed the point of no return: rising seas will soon directly affect hundreds of millions of people around the planet. They will indirectly affect many millions more as transport connections, water supplies and factories in low-lying areas are lost or have to be relocated. What exactly are we facing? The latest research suggests we are likely to see a rise of a metre by the year 2100. Given how much carbon dioxide is already in the air and oceans, as much as three metres may be baked in over the 200 years or so that follow. And while that might seem like a long way off, coastal groundwater levels will rise much sooner, wrecking infrastructure and causing toxic pollution well before cities such as Miami, New York and San Francisco are permanently inundated.

Where will all those people, warehouses, water treatment plants and rail lines move to, given that the interior of large land masses will have become drier? The forced migration of hundreds of millions of people will undoubtedly lead to serious international conflict over space and basic resources like fresh water. Conflict is another word for war.

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Stop talking, start acting, says Africa’s first extreme heat official

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Rising temperatures are already killing people in Sierra Leone’s Freetown, says Eugenia Kargbo, who is planning how best to protect the hundreds of thousands living in informal settlements

When she was growing up, Eugenia Kargbo could have a leisurely stroll, jog or cycle around the streets of Freetown. But that easy life no longer exists in Sierra Leone’s capital for her two children. The city is so swelteringly hot that children run the constant risk of sunburn or heat rashes if they are outdoors for very long.

“Over the past 10 years, there has been a dramatic change,” says Kargbo, 34, who has been appointed as Freetown’s chief heat officer – the first such post in Africa and only the third globally, after Athens and Miami.

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Community-led upgrade to a Nairobi slum could be a model for Africa

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Mukuru, one of Kenya’s largest informal settlements, has cleaned up its act with improved water, roads and sanitation

The people who live in Mukuru, one of the vast, sprawling “informal settlements” in Nairobi, used to dread the rains, when the slum’s mud-packed lanes would dissolve into a soggy quagmire of sewage, stagnant water and slimy rubbish.

But a few years ago, things began to change. On a newly paved road Benedetta Kasendi is selling sugar cane from a cart. It gives her a clean platform, somewhere she can keep her wares tidy. Her biggest challenge now is what to do with the sugar-cane waste as she does not want to clog up Mukuru’s revamped sewers.

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The making of a megacity: how Dhaka transformed in 50 years of Bangladesh

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In the half century since independence, the capital has grown from peaceful town to economic hub. But does it live up to the dreams of those still flocking to work there?

On the banks of the Buriganga, Old Dhaka’s boatmen only ever rest a moment before making their return journey, endlessly ferrying passengers back and forth across the river.

They pick them up at the Sadarghat docks, the historical trading hub that helped build the city, and row them towards the sprawling suburbs that have crept across what used to be open farmland two decades ago.

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‘Inspired by Central Park’: the new city for a million outside Karachi

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Bahria Town promises Pakistan’s middle classes respite from traffic, terror attacks and blackouts – local villagers are fighting to be heard by developers

Fronted by a dramatic gated arch, its roads fringed with neatly trimmed hedges, palm trees and lush grass, Bahria Town bears little resemblance to the urban chaos of nearby Karachi.

The economic heart of Pakistan is an overcrowded and often violent megacity with an official population of 15 million (closer to 20 million if the urban sprawl beyond the city perimeter is included). Infrastructure has not kept pace with its rapid expansion, and basic amenities such as water have become a commodity for criminal gangs. The city is also an organisational centre for the Pakistani Taliban, who attacked the airport in 2014.

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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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‘There is less fear’: restoration of Kabul repairs the ravages of war

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Afghanistan rebuilds the old town and creates register of dwellings to promote peace and help residents feel safer

Amir Gol first arrived in Kabul after fleeing his home – a Taliban stronghold – in Nangahar. He had no idea where to settle, so he rented a small mud house and started collecting and selling used plastic to make a living. Almost a decade later, little has changed for the 60-year old father of eleven. He sits cross-legged on a cushion outside the house he rents for 600 Afghani (£5) a month. Occasionally, he says, members of insurgent groups come to his neighbourhood, a settlement specked with poorly constructed mud houses and plastic tents in the city’s outskirts.

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Africa’s film awards still glitter, but few of its big screens are left

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‘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.

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Baghdad at 10 million: fragile dreams of normality as megacity status beckons

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The next 15 megacities #1: Iraq’s capital remains a profoundly damaged place, but the city feels more stable these days – at times even vibrant

After an exhausting journey through Baghdad’s vast and grimy suburbs, the pastel-coloured blocks of Besmaya Dream City rise up above the rushes just beyond one of the modern gates marking the edge of the city.

The orderliness of these dozens of towers – some lived in, some unfinished – is a shock in the otherwise chaotic jumble of low-rise cityscape. The residential complex is being built by a South Korean company, Hanwha, and will house 100,000 people once its delayed construction is complete.

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