Tag Archives: cities

A cute little beagle with big smiley eyes … how could you not fall in love with Watson? But the residents of my Parisian building were terrified when they saw him enter. Watson is not like any other dog. He’s trained to detect the tiny insects that have been all …

Each time a driver in Seattle meets a red light, they wait about 20 seconds on average before it turns green again, according to vehicle and smartphone data collected by analytics company Inrix. The delays cause annoyance and expel in Seattle alone an estimated 1,000 metric tons or more of …

As few as 2 percent of New York City’s previous 22,000 short-term rentals on Airbnb have been registered with the city since a new law banning most listings came into effect in early September. But many illegal short-term rental listings are now being advertised on social media and lesser known …

Two years after the remnants of Hurricane Ian dumped up to 10 inches of rain on New York City in just two hours, the metropolis is once again inundated today by extreme rainfall. It is one of the many cities worldwide grappling with a counterintuitive effect of climate change: Sometimes, …

In the center of Siena, Italy, a cathedral has stood for nearly 800 years. A black-and-white layer cake of heavy stone, fine-cut statuary, and rich mosaics, the imposing structure—now visited by more than a million tourists each year—would seem to be a permanent fixture of the city’s past, present, and …

Eat almost anything. Sleep almost anywhere. These, it seems, are the secrets to surviving in the city as a wild animal. Among the species that dominate urban spaces—pigeons, cockroaches, rats, foxes—these are the most obvious characteristics successful city dwellers have. But they aren’t the only tactics for urban survival. A …

The number of short-term Airbnbs available in New York City has dropped 70 percent after the city began enforcing a new law requiring short-term rental operators to register their homes. But despite the new requirements, there are still thousands of listings that could be unregistered. The drop, recorded between August …

A hurricane hitting the desert was not on anyone’s Burner bingo card for 2023. Burning Man, the annual 80,000-person bacchanal, happens about three hours outside of Reno, Nevada, in the Black Rock Desert every Labor Day. It’s a place of extremes: extreme temperatures, extreme dust storms, and an extreme lack …

Take a walk around San Francisco this summer and you’ll see something curious: Jaguar SUVs and Chevrolet hatchbacks driving around with no one inside. The ghostly vehicles are owned and operated by Google spinoff Waymo and General Motors subsidiary Cruise. Soon there will likely be a lot more of them, …