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About this content
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How do you build the perfect space for children?Designing the best cities for children involves recognising their right to play as well as learn, says groundbreaking kindergarten architect Takaharu Tezuka -
Why Copenhagen gives its blessing to illegal skateparksIllicit DIY skateparks are found in many cities, but nowhere is as open to them as Copenhagen. What’s behind the Danish capital’s tolerant approach?
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in pictures
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The city's forgotten neighbourhoodsGerman photographer Philipp Ebeling left behind familiar landmarks to travel to the forgotten locations where the city ceases to be the city
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The biggest city sinkholes around the worldAs a huge crater opened up in the Japanese city of Fukuoka, we take a look at the largest urban sinkholes – from Guangzhou to Guatemala City
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Detroit's custom cycles‘We take rusty old junk and we put love into it.’ The old Motor City has a unique style in bicycles these days: from fat wheels and fake fuel tanks to stretched cycles with powerful sound systems – and even a family-sized BBQ
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These developments look strangely familiarIn his project Familiar, designer Luca Picardi examines existing marketing material for new developments in North Europe – from London to Malmö, Hamburg to Helsinki – to highlight their striking similarities. If you’ve seen one …
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Life in an aircraft graveyardPhotojournalist Lauren DeCicca met three Thai families who have created makeshift homes from abandoned aeroplanes in a vacant lot in east Bangkok
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Behind the scenes in Vatican CityPhotographer Christian Sinibaldi was granted unprecedented access to the corridors of Vatican City. Over several months he gained the trust of those who work there, got to know the city’s inner workings, and captured scenes which are rarely seen by outsiders
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Singapore's 'silver tsunami': how the city-state depends on its elderly workforceIn Singapore, where life expectancy is soaring, the elderly are encouraged to exchange retirement for arduous jobs that often pay badly – yet many of its citizens, including Wong Kuan Ying, are only too keen to oblige
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An insider's guide to Juárez: the former murder capital finds a new directionFrom eco housing to cowboy cantinas, art galleries to poetry readings, the Mexican border city is moving on from its recent violent past
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'This city is designed for cars, not people’: residents' voices on JakartaCommutes that cause panic attacks – but the kindness of a village community. Jakarta’s residents tell us what life in the city is really like – and why they have such a love/hate relationship with the Indonesian capital
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Jakarta's eco future? River community goes green to fight eviction threatMore than 250 families are facing eviction from Jakarta’s Tongkol kampung. Their response? To rebuild their homes, clean up their river, and become a model for a more eco-friendly future for the city
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Waria at twilight: the remarkable old age home for trans JakartansPhotographer Elisabetta Zavoli spent years getting to know a famously standoffish community – who eventually granted her unprecedented access
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The city that many hajj pilgrims don't seeAs the hajj begins once again, Saudi artist Ahmed Mater has revealed unprecedented changes to the holy city – from flashy new hotels to the loss of priceless neighbourhoods
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The people who live in Tokyo's net cafesHow We Live Now: In Tokyo, commutes are so long, and apartments so small, that some people sleep in internet cafes – which offer showers, meals, clothes and everything you might need for a substitute home
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How beautiful Beirut is becoming a rubbish tipProtesters parody tourism video by juxtaposing images of Lebanon’s beauty spots with the reality of the country’s garbage crisis
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Stik in Shoreditch: the artist’s hidden tribute to a sold-off LondonThe street artist Stik set out to ask the denizens of Old Shoreditch how his new mural should reflect their gentrified neighbourhood
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Artist Doris Salcedo on Bogotá: 'The forces at work here are brutal'Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo takes us on a tour of Bogotá and her studio
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Toronto's test case for public-private gentrificationOnce notorious for bedbugs and crime, the Regent Park social housing development has been transformed with a $1bn revitalisation – and more than a few luxury apartments. But has it managed to avoid social cleansing?
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From Settlers of Brooklyn to SoDoSoPa: the best gentrification parodiesSaturday Night Live’s take on $8 artisanal mayonnaise in Bushwick and Key & Peele’s urban utopia for black people are among the comedy films riffing on the phenomenon everyone loves to loathe
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get involved
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Can you identify these world cities from space?Astronauts on the International Space Station took these images of cities at night
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From punk to pop-up: share your memories of Camden MarketSince opening in the 1970s, Camden Market has been both a home for alternative culture and a thriving tourist destination. Share your stories, memories and photos of the market – and how it’s changed – with GuardianWitness
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Urban memories: share your old photos of cities around the worldFrom lost buildings to transformed neighbourhoods, share your pictures and memories of the changing landscapes of cities with GuardianWitness
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Share ideas for what we should cover nextFrom filling billboards to mapping a whole city, readers and their experiences have played a huge role in the development of Guardian Cities. But what stories are we missing, and how can we improve? Share your ideas and suggestions
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Can the city recapture its 1950s pedal power heyday?Poet Philip Larkin described Hull as ‘very nice and flat for cycling’ – and in the 1950s a third of the population rode regularly. It’s still flat, so why is this pioneer cycling city back-pedalling?
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Can Jakarta find an alternative to the car?Attracted by the air-conditioning and the status, many of the 3.5 million people who commute into the hot and humid Indonesian capital come by car. With four hours in traffic not unusual, Jakarta is searching for solutions
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Bikes outnumber cars for the first time in CopenhagenDenmark’s capital has reached a milestone in its journey to become a cycling city – there are now more bikes than cars on the streets. Can other cities follow?
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Will the US ever kick the car habit?Motor City Detroit built the automobiles, oil capital Houston fuelled them and Los Angeles was carved up by freeways in their honour. Yet now all three cities are pushing walking, cycling and the use of public transport. So does this mean America’s love affair with the car is finally waning?
live weeks
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$40bn to save Jakarta: the story of the Great GarudaForget Venice. The fastest-sinking city is the Indonesian capital, parts of which are dropping at 25cm a year. Can an outlandish plan for a giant seawall and luxury waterworld city in the shape of a mythical bird save Jakarta from drowning?
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Inside Makoko: danger and ingenuity in the world's biggest floating slumMakoko is the perfect nightmare for the Lagos government – a slum in full view, spread out beneath the most travelled bridge in west Africa’s megalopolis. Yet this city on stilts, whose residents live under the constant threat of eviction, has much to teach
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A history of cities in 50 buildings – interactiveFrom the 4,600-year-old pyramid of Zoser to the under-construction one kilometre-high Kingdom Tower – via the first London semi, Beijing’s old stock exchange and LA’s stacked freeway interchange – these 50 structures tell unique stories of our urban history
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Story of cities #3: 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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Story of cities #5: Benin City, the mighty medieval capital now lost without traceWith its mathematical layout and earthworks longer than the Great Wall of China, Benin City was one of the best planned cities in the world when London was a place of ‘thievery and murder’. So why is nothing left?
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Story of cities #32: Jane Jacobs v Robert Moses, battle of New York's urban titansWhen city planning supremo Robert Moses proposed a road through Greenwich Village in 1955, he met opposition from one particularly feisty local resident: Jane Jacobs. It was the start of a decades-long struggle for swaths of New York
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Story of cities #41: Soul City's failed bid to build a black-run suburbia for AmericaCivil rights activist Floyd McKissick dreamed of a southern utopia where the racially integrated community would be planned and managed by African Americans. Although the city was never completed, some traces remain
you may have missed
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China's Pearl River Delta, then and nowThe Pearl River Delta has witnessed the most rapid urban expansion in human history – a predominantly agricultural region transformed into the world’s largest continuous city. By revisiting the sites of rare archive images of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Macau from the 1940s through 1990s, our photographers have documented this staggering change
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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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Subterranean London: the hidden labyrinth underneath the streets of the capitalUnderneath the streets of the capital lies a hidden labyrinth of Victorian sewers. We’re going down 20 metres and back 150 years
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London mayor launches unprecedented inquiry into foreign property ownershipExclusive Sadiq Khan tells the Guardian he will carry out ‘the most thorough research on this matter ever undertaken’ amid widespread concern over rising housing costs and gentrification
'A stranger in my home town' Why Brexit drove Andy Martin out of Sunderland