Allergy sufferers know how this goes: Spring starts calling, and pollen begins falling.

Skyscrapers in the City of London would be required to dim their lights at night as part of proposals to reduce visual pollution and save energy. Under the proposal from the City of London Corporation, property owners across the Square Mile – a 1.12 square mile zone in the centre of the capital whose boundaries stretch from the Temple to the Tower of London and from Chancery Lane to Liverpool Street – would be asked to switch off unnecessary building lights to create “brightness zones” governed by curfews.

Butterflies and bees are getting their own transport network as “bee bus stops” start to pop up around UK cities and across Europe. Humble bus shelter roofs are being turned into riots of colour, with the number of miniature gardens – full of pollinator-friendly flora such as wild strawberries, poppies and pansies – set to increase by 50% in the UK by the end of this year.

The environment in which you grew up can have a long-lasting effect on your navigational skills, according to an analysis of data from nearly 400,000 players of a mobile game. People who spent their childhood in rural or suburban areas tended to be better at navigating in the game Sea Hero Quest than those who grew up in cities. This difference could be seen decades later, the researchers report in Nature, and was particularly striking in countries where cities are organised in a grid layout.

To the naturalist in me, the world is full of sorrows: extinctions, the deaths of ancient forests, fires and floods. But the evolutionary biologist in me is more sanguine. The process of evolution continues unabated. If anything, humans have caused it to speed up.

Recently, I came across a paper by the great historian, and philosopher of technology, Lewis Mumford, titled ‘Authoritarian and Democratic Technics’ (ADT). Mumford, who was an expert on cities and architecture, publishing the monumental The City in History in 1961, had a unique insight into the way that technics operated in an urban environment. His essay is concerned with how technical systems, from ancient times to today, have the propensity to enable or resist authoritarianism.

Picking up the pieces after Covid-19, cities are reinventing themselves to be more inclusive, sustainable and liveable. Cities were hit hard by Covid-19, which raised questions about their long-term futures. Many urban areas saw an exodus of the privileged, who chose to work remotely in their second homes, as rents tumbled and the decrease in human activity lowered air pollution.

There are thousands of abandoned big box stores sitting empty all over America, including hundreds of former Walmart stores. With each store taking up enough space for 2.5 football fields, Walmart’s use of more than 698 million square feet of land in the U.S. is one of its biggest environmental impacts. But at least one of those buildings has been transformed into something arguably much more useful: the nation’s largest library.

Manhattan, the vertical city, greets newcomers as a sheer rockface. To even begin the ascent requires agility, nerve, and a secure base camp. If you can’t establish that base—the right apartment—the plunge is swift: you bounce to a friend’s couch, then to a squat in Bushwick, and suddenly you’re at the Port Authority holding a sign for bus fare home.

Titled Telosa, the project aims to create a new city in America that sets a global standard for urban living and becomes a blueprint for future generations.

Teleworking, not the coronavirus, is making urban living obsolete.

Phil Holland, Gotham Film Works

It’s a civic resource, an index of inequality, and a requirement for public health. Shade should be a mandate for urban designers. By Sam Bloch.

What once seemed like the moonshot vision of tech billionaires and idealistic architects could soon become a concrete solution to several of the world’s most pressing challenges. At a United Nations roundtable on Wednesday, a group of builders, engineers, and architects debuted a concept for an affordable floating city. Unlike instances in the past when these futuristic designs have been met with scepticism, the executive director of the United Nations Human Settlement Programme...

When residents of the International Business District (IBD) in Songdo, South Korea go to work, pick up their kids from school, or shop for groceries, driving is optional. That's because the $40 billion district— currently a work-in-progress about the size of downtown Boston — was designed to eliminate the need for cars.

Research shows how ancient Angkor experienced the same challenges as modern urban networks. As we move further into a period characterised by extreme weather events, the resilience of our urban infrastructure will be tested. Will our cities go down like Angkor did? By Dan Penny.

Who is paying $12 million for an abandoned town? We found out. By Michael Waters.

After a complaint threatened to shutter a young boy's hotdog stand, US city officials decided instead to rally behind him to keep it open. Jaequan Faulkner, 13, has been selling hotdogs outside his home in North Minneapolis, in the Midwestern state of Minnesota, since 2016. His stand was at risk of closure after someone reported him for not having a permit, local media say. Instead, city staff helped him obtain a permit and get back to work on Monday.

It's hard to measure the value of a tree, but scientists equipped with lasers have come one step closer.

When searching for an apartment in New York, people typically have a few key features they're looking for. In Caroline Shadood’s case, her apartment in Glendale, Queens really has the “quiet neighbors” part nailed. By David Colon.