cities
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Will Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp, really close?Twenty-five years after it opened, Kenya has announced its third biggest ‘city’, the Dadaab refugee complex, is to be shut down. But for many residents, this sprawling slum in an inhospitable desert is the only home they know
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Where are the world's most fire-prone cities?Images of the devastated Canadian city show just how destructive fire can be to urban populations. But the risk is greatest in informal settlements, where high population density and low-grade construction can be a deadly combination -
How Dubai's World Trade Centre sold the city to the worldIn the 1970s, the World Trade Centre stood beyond the edge of the city and convinced the world that Dubai was open for business -
An insider's guide to Yerevan: the city where Kanye likes to swim in Swan LakeWater fights, buildings that look like Soviet spaceships and the clacking of backgammon boards give life to the inner courtyards of Armenia’s capital
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Medellín escapes grip of drug lord to embrace radical urbanismTwenty-five years ago, Medellín was the most dangerous city on earth. Yet its most infamous criminal, Pablo Escobar, also helped create the conditions that sparked an extraordinary revival – by taking the city to the brink of collapse
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How to solve the hell of commuting to London? Readers share their thoughtsAs London grows in population yet becomes increasingly unaffordable, so the numbers of commuters rise – and the experience of commuting worsens. Our readers shared their thoughts on how to tackle the problem
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How are cities around the world tackling air pollution?More cycling, better public transport and car bans - cities from Delhi to Zurich are using a range of initiatives to lower traffic pollution and improve health
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Mississippi city ordered to desegregate schools 60 years after landmark rulingFederal court says Cleveland’s delay in desegregating its schools has ‘deprived generations of students’ of their constitutional rights
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Drowned worlds: Egypt's lost citiesAs a major new exhibition opens at the British Museum, Charlotte Higgins travels to the Nile Delta to meet the archaeologists uncovering the spellbinding secrets of ancient Naukratis
the big picture
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No vacancies: life in Mozambique's abandoned Grande Hotel – in picturesWhen it opened in 1955, the Grande Hotel in the Indian Ocean city of Beira was one of the most luxurious in Africa. Photojournalist Fellipe Abreu documents the lives of the 3,500 people who now fill this long-closed hotel to capacity
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Visions of heaven and hell: life on the fringes of the world's biggest citiesOver eight years, photojournalist Adam Hinton spent time in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, Jakarta, Manila, Cape Town and Caracas, meeting residents who deal every day with poverty and prejudice
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One small step for Amman: could a viral video shake up Jordan's stifled capital?An architect’s video outlining ambitious proposals for Amman’s biggest urban failure, the Jordan Gate Project, has gone viral. Has previous apathy towards the city’s lack of community life now turned into a hunger for public space?
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Story of cities #37: how radical ideas turned Curitiba into Brazil's 'green capital'As an architect and mayor, Jaime Lerner led the movement that transformed Curitiba into an environmentally friendly ‘laboratory for urban planning’. The secret? ‘We had to work fast to avoid our own bureaucracy’
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We've been mayors of New York, Paris and Rio. We know climate action starts with citiesIf we want to reduce emissions, cities are key. But they need to be empowered if they are to have an impact
talking points
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The birth of Baghdad was a landmark for world civilisationThe foundation of al-Mansur’s ‘Round City’ in 762 was a glorious milestone in the history of urban design. It developed into the cultural centre of the world
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get involved
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'Teach young people we are not going to move over': stories of ageing in citiesFrom tackling isolation in Leicester to better footpaths in Dhaka, you shared your experiences of how cities could be improved for older generations
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Call yourself an urbanist? Take our ultimate city pub quizTo kick off our collaboration with the Young Urbanists, quizmaster Rob Cowan tests your city knowledge with questions straight from the group’s pub quiz
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Have you recently migrated to a new city? Share your storyRefuge cities Europe continues to be gripped by a refugee crisis, but forced migration is happening all around the world. We want to hear your first-hand accounts of migrating to a new city and how you’ve been received
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'You are left with no choice but to leave' – your stories of long-term gentrificationReaders from Istanbul, London, San Jose, Montreal, Newcastle and Buenos Aires share their experiences of neighbourhood change over the decades
in pictures
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Playgrounds for the elderlyCities around the world have been designing outdoor gyms and play areas for older generations to improve fitness and wellbeing. Even non-specialist playgrounds are getting multi-generational. Play’s not just for kids...
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The heritage of London's brutalist architectureA new project by photographer Rory Gardiner and studio esinam highlights the subtle beauties hidden beneath the hard surface of London’s oft-maligned brutalist buildings, from the Barbican to the National Theatre
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Street football in Africa: flyovers and floating schoolsIn Africa, the beautiful game isn’t confined to the stadium: from city roads to markets to beneath giant flyovers, football belongs everywhere
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The hidden life of Rome's Tiber riverThe Tiber’s banks provide an isolated ecosystem in the centre of the Italian capital. Photographer Luigi Pastoressa documents a riverside used by cyclists and street vendors, homeless people and artists, drug addicts and fishermen
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Abandoned airports around the worldUrban growth, sporting events, financial crashes and political turmoil have left a trail of city airports and airfields deserted around the globe. While some lie abandoned or face redevelopment, others are being creatively reused
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Cracked walls, wrinkled faces: Paris' modernist housing estates and their elderly residentsPhotographer Laurent Kronental spent four years documenting the lives of older citizens living in the Grands Ensembles housing estates built around Paris after the second world war for his Souvenir d’un Futur project
you may have missed
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Is Morrissey's city still recognisable?Thirty years on from The Smiths’ only UK No 1 studio album, how do the band’s legendary evocations of 1980s Manchester compare with life in the city today? There’s only one place to start …
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Affordable housing quotas get waived and the interests of residents trampled as toothless authorities bow to the dazzling wealth of investors from Russia, China and the Middle EastThe truth about property developers: how they are exploiting planning authorities and ruining our cities
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Rumble in the Jungle: 40 years on, Kinshasa is a city of chaosThe 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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Timbuktu: portrait of a city on the edge of existenceWhat 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
Superblocks to the rescue: Barcelona’s plan to give streets back to residents