Tag Archives: cities

This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish. The wide mowed lawns and leafy trees, the sports fields shining under their illuminated lights, the bouncy castles in the children’s play areas—especially the bouncy castles—are what Celia Pérez Godínez envies. These are the trappings of …

It’s been one year since New York enacted a law that barred most whole-apartment rentals for short-term stays on platforms like Airbnb. Since then, the number of stays under 30 days has plummeted in the city, but Airbnb is raising questions about whether the lawmakers’ stated goals—lowering rents and opening …

In November 2022, Dominique Lazarski stood among a small crowd of people on the Pontoise airfield near Paris, watching a flying taxi trace wide circles in a clear blue sky after it took off for the first time from a working vertiport in France. Airborne, the vehicle looked like a …

This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Urban ducks and crows might offer us a connection to nature, but scientists have found wild birds that live near humans are more likely to harbor bacteria resistant to important antibiotics. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is …

On a graffiti-stained sidewalk in Paris, a strange sight appeared days before the Olympic opening ceremony in July: Around 40 giant cement Lego-like blocks in neat rows beneath the Pont de Stains, a bridge in the northern suburb of Aubervilliers that connects two Olympic sites, the Stade de France and …

As mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz has plenty of problems to reckon with. Her London borough is wrestling with entrenched poverty and the capital's highest rate of residents stuck in temporary housing. But midway through her second term, Fiaz has a new plan to turn things around. She believes that …

The deadliest environmental threat to city dwellers worldwide isn’t earthquakes, tornadoes, flooding, or fire. It’s heat. By June this year, more than 1.5 billion people had spent a day in life-threatening temperatures above 103 degrees Fahrenheit, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. In Phoenix, Arizona, where almost 400 …

Designer Thomas Heatherwick thinks the construction industry is in a crisis. “We’ve just got so used to buildings that are boring,” says the man behind London’s revived Routemaster bus, Google’s Bay View, and New York’s Little Island. “New buildings, again and again, are too flat, too plain, too straight, too …

From wildfires in Canada to flooding in India, people across the world are dealing with the realities of climate change. The world recorded its highest temperatures ever this summer and the climate models for 2100 make sobering reading. To tackle climate change we need a data-driven approach, using technology to …

Search for Airbnbs in Paris in late July and you’ll be offered options ranging from a tiny studio with glimpses of the Eiffel Tower for $167 a night up to a stunning luxury apartment steps from the Champs-Élysées for nearly $3,500 a night. The company is also offering two lucky …