The 15 most popular Guardian Cities stories published in 2017 featured cities in Spain, the US, China, Japan, Norway and Great Britain – among other countries.
Catch up with the best-read items of urban journalism you might have missed this year, and help us get a head start on the year to come: what stories, from which cities, should we tell in 2018? Leave your ideas in the comments.
15. Parasite architecture: inside the self-built studio hanging under a bridge in Valencia
Fernando Abellanas’ new studio, far from the madding crowds of Valencia in eastern Spain, is an example of what is becoming known as parasite architecture: buildings that cling to, perch on or sprout from others.
14. The great American fallout: how small towns came to resent cities
Katherine Cramer has spent a decade talking with residents of small-town Wisconsin about their struggle to make ends meet, and the lack of response from anyone with the power to make life better. “These groups have a class analysis of what is going on in their country; and what’s going on is essentially about where things are going: to the cities.”
13. ‘Forest cities’: the radical plan to save China from air pollution
When Stefano Boeri imagines the future of urban China, he sees green, and lots of it. The Italian architect, famed for his tree-clad Bosco Verticale skyscraper complex in Milan, has plans to create entire “forest cities” in a country that has become synonymous with environmental degradation and smog.
12. Uber for bikes: how ‘dockless’ cycles flooded China – and are heading overseas
Dubbed “Uber for bikes”, the brightly coloured “dockless” share bikes that stand out like a rash across many Chinese cities are the product of a whole host of new startups, aggressively competing for territory and investment.
11. Twisted tracks: watch metro maps transform to real-life geography
Public transit maps necessarily distort the city’s true geography. But by how much? A series of animated graphics answers that question.
10. Raze, rebuild, repeat: why Japan knocks down its houses after 30 years
Japanese homes depreciate over time to become completely valueless within 20 or 30 years. When someone moves out of a home or dies, the house is typically demolished – but a stagnant economy is forcing the country into a rethink.
9. ‘Spat on and ignored’: what I’ve learned from a month sleeping rough in London
“This is my 27th out of 31 days rough sleeping in central London. I’m not homeless – I’ve got a countdown on my hand until I stop this project. I am raising money.”
8. The 10 most unaffordable cities for housing … and the most affordable city
The 13th annual Demographia international housing affordability survey ranks the affordability of “middle-income” housing in 406 cities, and one stood out for the seventh consecutive year.
7. ‘Never drink in a flat-roofed pub’: how the old joke became a reality
Whether they’re 1930s-style redbrick structures with pitched roofs and large beer gardens, or forbidding cubes of wood and brick that squat in the shadow of tower blocks, English postwar estate bars are at risk. They’re being closed and converted into shops or apartments, boarded up and left to rot, or completely wiped from the map, leaving a cleared site and an empty car park.
6. Tipping point: revealing the cities where exercise does more harm than good
Who says exercise is always good for you? Cycling to work in these highly polluted cities could be more dangerous to your health than not doing it at all.
5. Sand mining: the global environmental crisis you’ve probably never heard of
The global urbanisation boom is devouring colossal amounts of sand – the key ingredient of concrete and asphalt. From Cambodia to California, industrial-scale sand mining is causing wildlife to die, local trade to wither and bridges to collapse.
4. Oslo’s car ban sounded simple enough. Then the backlash began
Oslo sought to become the first major European city to have a permanent no-car zone, racing ahead of a long list of cities seeking to do the same – but the plan proved simply too revolutionary.
3. Revealed: the insidious creep of pseudo-public space in London
Although seemingly accessible, with the look and feel of public land, privately owned public spaces – or “Pops” – are usually enforced by private security companies. A Guardian Cities investigation revealed an almost complete lack of transparency over who owns the sites in London, and how they are policed.
2. Homeless in Britain: ‘I graduated with honours – and ended up on the streets’
“Prior to falling well and truly over the edge, I had neither experience nor understanding of drug addicts and homeless people, and hence very little sympathy for them. Yet what I think many fail to realise is that every man and woman has a breaking point, somewhere, even if most will thankfully never have to meet with it.”
1. Boxed in: life inside the ‘coffin cubicles’ of Hong Kong
Cage homes are minuscule rooms, mostly beds sealed with wooden planks, occupied by the poorest people in Hong Kong. Photographer Benny Lam documented these suffocating living conditions in subdivided flats, recording the lives of these hidden communities.
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