The GuardianCities The story of cities, part 1: how Alexandria laid foundations for the modern world The Guardian - Jack ShenkerIn the first in a 50-part series charting the history of the planet’s urbanisation, Jack Shenker explores the ancient metropolis of Alexandria, which set a powerful precedent for future cities all over
The Guardian Story of cities #2: Rome wasn't planned in a day … in fact it wasn't planned at all The Guardian - Adrian Mourby in RomeThe grid system which the Roman republic exported all over Europe was never employed in the capital itself. The city has always lacked a coherent plan – save for the monumental temple that once towered
The GuardianBaghdad Story of cities #3: the birth of Baghdad was a landmark for world civilisation The Guardian - Justin MarozziThe 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 If Baghdad today is a byword for inner-city
The GuardianBeijing Story of cities #4: Beijing and the earliest planning document in history The Guardian - Oliver WainwrightThe seemingly incoherent sprawl of modern Beijing is based on meticulous plans to bind citizens together under imperial rule. Conceived as a means of enforcing social order, the impact of planning remains
The GuardianWest Africa Story of cities #5: Benin City, the mighty medieval capital now lost without trace The Guardian - Mawuna KoutoninWith 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 left?
The Guardian Story of cities #6: how silver turned Potosí into 'the first city of capitalism' The Guardian - Patrick GreenfieldThe discovery of a mountain of silver (and a new way to extract it) transformed this remote Incan hamlet into the economic centre of Spain’s empire – larger than London, Milan or Seville. But then the
The Guardian Story of cities #7: Philadelphia grid marks birth of America's urban dream The Guardian - Emily MannWilliam Penn’s city was planned as a utopian ideal; a grid of broad streets to promote green urban living for settlers to this 17th-century colony. While Penn grew disillusioned, his design lives on in
The Guardian Story of cities #8: St Petersburg – is the 'city built on bones' starting to crumble? The Guardian - Alec Luhn in St PetersburgBuilt on a swamp at the cost of thousands of lives, Peter the Great’s ‘antidote to Moscow’ has survived uprisings, sieges and floods to become Europe’s third largest city. But is history now catching with
The Guardian Story of cities #9: Kingston, Jamaica – a city born of 'wickedness' and disaster The Guardian - Emily MannWhen the devastating earthquake of 1692 ripped through Port Royal, aka the ‘richest and wickedest city in the world’, a very different Caribbean capital rose up in its place. But could Kingston’s rigid
The Guardian Story of cities #10: how the dirty Old Town became enlightened Edinburgh The Guardian - Tom CampbellScotland’s capital was in a desperate state, plagued by social problems and limited space. Then a young, unqualified architect came up with a plan for Edinburgh New Town – and it heralded the greatest
The Guardian Story of cities #11: the reclamation of Mumbai – from the sea, and its people? The Guardian - Srinath Perur in MumbaiTransforming Bombay’s seven islets into land fit for a city was a daunting challenge. Its success created one of the world’s megacities – but today Mumbai faces the twin challenges of extreme population
The Guardian Story of cities #12: Haussmann rips up Paris – and divides France to this day The Guardian - Kim Willsher in ParisGeorges-Eugène Haussmann is feted internationally for transforming the French capital with an audacious programme of urban planning. Yet 125 years after his death, his legacy at home remains much more
The Guardian Story of cities #13: Barcelona's unloved planner invents science of 'urbanisation' The Guardian - Marta Bausells in BarcelonaConstricted by its medieval walls, Barcelona was suffocating – until unknown engineer Ildefons Cerdà came up with a radical expansion plan. Rival architects disparaged him, yet his scientific approach
The GuardianLondon, UK Story of cities #14: London's Great Stink heralds a wonder of the industrial world The Guardian - Emily MannBy the mid-1800s, the River Thames had been used as a dumping ground for human excrement for centuries. At last, fear of its ‘evil odour’ led to one of the greatest advancements in urban planning: Joseph
The GuardianBrazil The story of cities #15: the rise and ruin of Rio de Janeiro's first favela The Guardian - Bruce Douglas in Rio de JaneiroSince it was first built by war veterans in 1897, Morro da Providência has become a complex symbol of poverty, violence and sentimentality, fetishised in popular culture. But where do Rio’s favelas fit
The Guardian Story of cities #16: how the US-run Canal Zone divided Panama for a century The Guardian - Drew ReedThe creation of the trans-oceanic canal came at a heavy price for Panama – with thousands of workers dying, and the US-controlled Canal Zone generating an “apartheid” atmosphere that sparked deep unrest
The Guardian Story of cities #17: Canberra's vision of the ideal city gets mired in 'mediocrity' The Guardian - Paul DaleyChicago pacifist Walter Griffin’s design for Australia’s new capital promised so much – even German beer gardens. But when war broke out, his ideas were shunned by planners and politicians alike, and more
The GuardianHousing Story of cities #18: Vienna's 'wild settlers' kickstart a social housing revolution The Guardian - Andreas Rumpfhuber in ViennaLeft homeless and destitute by war, the Austrian capital’s hordes of self-building settlers revealed the potential for an unprecedented reorganisation of urban society. Its impact is still felt today,
The Guardian Story of cities #19: Johannesburg's apartheid purge of vibrant Sophiatown The Guardian - David AdlerThe bulldozers arrived in Sophiatown at five o’clock on the morning of 9 February, 1955. Behind them in the darkness, police commanders lined up with piles of paper – lists of names and addresses, eviction
The Guardian Story of cities #20: the secret history of Magnitogorsk, Russia's steel city The Guardian - Alec Luhn in MagnitogorskDesigned for Stalin as the world’s first completely planned city, Magnitogorsk has yet to confront its controversial past – from the forced labour that helped build it in record time, to the severe pollution
The Guardian Story of cities #21: Olivetti tries to build the ideal 'human city' for its workers The Guardian - Claire Provost and Simone Lai in IvreaAdriano Olivetti turned a small, Italian typewriter company into a global phenomenon – but his true obsession was transforming its headquarters, Ivrea, into a model industrial metropolis. The city has
The Guardian Story of cities #22: how Hitler's plans for Germania would have torn Berlin apart The Guardian - Kate Connolly in BerlinHitler’s megalomaniacal project to raze much of Berlin and transform it into his global Nazi capital killed thousands. Today, its few remnants are chilling, mundane, even graceful – and inseparable from
The Guardian Story of cities #23: how disaster sparked Napier's art deco renaissance The Guardian - Charles AndersonAfter the ruinous Hawke’s Bay earthquake, rebuilding a city in the midst of the Great Depression seemed impossible. But through artistry and enterprise, Napier became home to the highest concentration
The Guardian Story of cities #24: how Hiroshima rose from the ashes of nuclear destruction The Guardian - Justin McCurry in HiroshimaIn August 1945, a 16-kilotonne atomic bomb killed 140,000 people and reduced a thriving city to rubble. Hiroshima has been reborn as a place of peace and prosperity, but will memories of those dark days
The Guardian Story of cities #25: Shannon – a tiny Irish town inspires China’s economic boom The Guardian - Matt Kennard and Claire Provost in ShannonCreated in 1959 to lure foreign investors with tax breaks, the Shannon Free Zone proved revolutionary across the world. But in today’s world of looser trade and tax havens, Ireland’s innovators face an
The GuardianJawaharlal Nehru Story of cities #26: Delhi's modernist dream proves a far-fetched fantasy The Guardian - David AdlerThe planners of independent India’s new capital failed spectacularly in their attempt to create a poverty-free modernist utopia. Their legacy is a sprawling city awash with slums and hampered by bureaucracy
The Guardian Story of cities #27: Singapore – the most meticulously planned city in the world The Guardian - Colin MarshallLee Kuan Yew’s vice-like grip on power helped create a byword for cleanliness, efficiency and safety. What lies beneath this ‘Disneyland with the death penalty’? On 12 May 2015, a Singapore court sentenced
The Guardian Story of cities #28: how postwar Warsaw was rebuilt using 18th century paintings The Guardian - Daryl Mersom in WarsawWhen Warsaw’s Old Town was destroyed by Hitler’s troops in the second world war, the nation mobilised to rebuild the city with the rubble of its own destruction – and the work of Italian painter Bernardo
The GuardianUrban Design Story of cities #29: Los Angeles and the 'great American streetcar scandal' The Guardian - Colin MarshallWhen LA was stripped of its beloved streetcar in the 1960s, the city was quickly thrust into a traffic-clogged world of private cars and diesel buses. But with the involvement of automobile and oil companies,
