Working late: London’s shopfronts in winter – in pictures
Shot between November 2023 and January 2024, this series explores the dark early evenings of winter when businesses are illuminated with a surprising range and intensity of colours
November 2023
‘It was a case study for what not to do’: the regeneration project that became a £100m luxury ghost town
The plan was to take old railway arches in a run-down area of east London and turn them into a high-end fashion hub. Instead, Hackney Walk ended up deserted. What went so disastrously wrong?
February 2022
‘People want to reclaim something pure’: the rise of the urban honesty stall
Unattended stalls selling homegrown produce have always been a feature of Australian country life. Now a new crop of city gardeners are getting in on the game
July 2021
In the dock: Bristol wild swimmers flout harbour ban in fight for city lido
Rebels call for a designated public swimming area in the working dock, in the style of Copenhagen’s successful model
February 2021
‘Monument to hard graft’: a post-industrial walk on Teesside’s Black Path
Maxïmo Park’s lead singer, a local, walks the trail from Middlesbrough to Redcar, through a landscape that influenced Blade Runner and Brave New World
Set children free: are playgrounds a form of incarceration?
Play has been the invisible casualty of the pandemic. Is it time to let children reclaim the streets? Our writer looks forward to a post-Covid world of parklets, play streets and repurposed parking spaces
My best shot
The world in one park: Irina Rozovsky's best photograph
‘If you’re standing still on a New York street, you’re either lost or crazy. But on the shores of this lake, I saw real stillness for the first time’
October 2020
'Here we reconnect with humanity': urban open spaces to lift the spirits
Guardian readers look back to simpler times in lockdown when they escaped to local hidden gems
August 2020
Sanctuary in the city: how urban parks saved our summer
Created by the Victorians as Britain industrialised, city parks and green spaces have ‘become living rooms’ during the pandemic
June 2020
Life in the time of corona
'Revel in the grubby wilderness': how to spot nature from lockdown
Staying home during the pandemic presents a unique opportunity to become better acquainted with wilderness in all its forms
Paths of desire: lockdown has lent a new twist to the trails we leave behind
Unofficial trails quietly carved into the landscape by people seeking shortcuts are nothing new. But lockdown has lent them a surprising new twist… By Amelia Tait
The age of extinction
Walking app helps tree lovers know their sycamores from their maples
Record traffic for TreeTalk sparks global interest as users reconnect with the species that line their streets
March 2020
Accidental countryside: why nature thrives in unlikely places
At an urban reservoir, a panoply of rare birds has found a home. It is one of many areas created for human use that has become a wildlife haven
November 2019
Dinosaurs, dogging and death: the secret life of British car parks
In Car Park Life, Gareth E Rees looks into these unnoticed spaces for truths about humanity and pulls up more than he expected
May 2019
Walking the city
The art of noticing: five ways to experience a city differently
When you learn to recognise the beauty in ruins and weeds, you’re really getting somewhere
April 2019
Nuclear wasteland: inside Chernobyl's exclusion zone – in pictures
The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 forced the evacuation of nearby Pripyat, home to 45,000 people. David McMillan has journeyed there 21 times since to record abandoned homes and buildings as they are reclaimed by nature
March 2019
Lost cities
'A race against time': urban explorers record vanishing Hong Kong
From Bruce Lee’s mansion to Bauhaus-style Central Market, HK Urbex are documenting the fast-changing city’s fading heritage
January 2019
Walking the city
'No one likes being a tourist': the rise of the anti-tour
Crowds, vandals, chaos: what happens when Banksy sprays your wall?
November 2018
How Gordon Matta-Clark took a chainsaw to 70s New York
Sledgehammer in hand, the intrepid artist and ‘anarchitect’ embarked on a perilous odyssey of urban deconstruction – clearing a path for generations to come before his death aged 35
