Explorers claim they have evidence of a 2,500-year-old planned city—complete with water reservoirs, roads, seals and coins—buried in Chhattisgarh, a discovery that is being billed as the nation’s biggest archaeological find in at least half a century.

Daniel Brook’s new book, A History of Future Cities, reviews the development of four "unlikely sister cities:" St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai. Beginning in St. Petersburg in the early 1700s, Brook identifies the moment when each city started to become "modern" and charts its progress through the present.

Australia’s capital city turns 100 this weekend, but Canberra, like so many other purpose-built capitals around the world, is still struggling to convince outsiders that it has more to offer than political hot air, says Madeleine Morris.

OMA has revealed its designs for a new Airport City in Qatar. The 30 year masterplan includes four circular districts running along a spine parallel to the runways of the new Hamad International Airport. Each district has a unique identity – business, aviation, logistics and residential.

Maharashtra has seen pioneering enterprises in several domains, and perhaps the most ambitious is the planned city of Lavasa, about 216 kilometers from Mumbai, near the Mumbai-Pune corridor along the Warasgaon Lake.

White Architects has just been selected as the winner of the competition to relocate the City Center of Kiruna, located in the north of Sweden. Their proposal, titled “Kiruna 4-ever”, creates a sustainable vision for the long-term expansion of the city eastwards.

Marriott International moved into the economy hotel market, teaming up with IKEA’s real estate arm to launch a new European chain for travellers seeking style on a budget.

Embedded in the core of a project described by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka as "rising like Aphrodite from the foam of the Atlantic" is a functionality that does not only protect but also enhances the value of its environment.

THOUSANDS of Soweto residents in Kibera slums yesterday watched helplessly as a bulldozer rolled into the slum destroying their houses and other properties. The demolitions were carried out after the expiry of a five-day notice that was issued by the City Council of Nairobi on Saturday.

A new ebook by Gair Dunlop looks back on the glory days of Cumbernauld, UK.

Tributes to the human will and intelligence to conquer nature reverberated in Lagos Thursday as leaders stood in awe of the Eko Atlantic City, located inside the Atlantic Ocean-end of the state.

Europe’s biggest casino and conference centre to bring jobs, but also fears of gambling addiction, prostitution and mafia activities

In 2010, SMoCA initiated a series of three exhibitions exploring the trajectory of Paolo Soleri’s art, architecture and philosophy. Paolo Soleri: Mesa City to Arcosanti is the second in the series.

Thousands of Ethiopians are being relocated or have already fled as their land is sold off to foreign investors without their consent.

The new city is designed in the mould of the wealthy Sandton area of Johannesburg, South Africa.

The project is already underway at the site, some 40km west of Harare, along Old Mazowe Road, where construction of a new Parliament building to accommodate the country’s 210 MPs and 80 Senators has already started.

According to the Draft Spatial Plan for Nairobi Metropolitan Region, world-class living standards — good infrastructure, affordable housing for all, effective transportation, effective governance, secure neighbourhoods, and a booming economy — await residents under the jurisdiction of the City Council of Nairobi and 14 other local authorities that make up the 32,000 square kilometre Nairobi Metropolitan Region.

New smart cities are seen by some as the answer to rising populations and fewer resources – but others believe existing infrastructure holds the key.

Oscar Niemeyer may be gone, but his spirit is certainly not forgotten. Last week, in protest of the Brasília city government’s $4.5 million, 50-year contract with Singapore’s Jurong Consultants to build a new urban masterplan, architects donned masks bearing the likeness of the late modernist, as well as that of Lúcio Costa, the fellow architect whose urban planning, alongside Niemeyer’s architecture, shaped Brasília’s modern identity.

In the latest issue, Zawia tackles an idea close to the heart of many New Town builders: Utopia. A loaded term? Certainly. But in these times of social unrest, economic crisis and global warming, the editors want to return to the hopeful, optimistic outlooks that inspired our forefathers. What form does the Utopia of today take?

Click here to learn more about this new voice in the world of design. And click here to check out Zawia #00: Change.

Slums, shanty-towns, favelas - they are all products of an exploding migration from rural to urban areas. Over the last half century, people living in or near metropolises has risen in proportion to the global population.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - The highway climbs toward the edge of Guatemala City, past deep ravines where the poorest residents of the capital live in thousands of cinderblock huts, roofed with plastic sheets and powered by black cables stealing electricity from nearby lampposts.

Seven miles (11 kilometers) south of the historic center, the rutted, two-lane road comes to a set of towering white stucco walls and a pair of broad cast-iron gates that open onto apartment buildings and storefronts designed in Spanish colonial style. Cupolas top red-tile roofs. Residents sip cappucinos and lattes under red umbrellas in the sleek silver chairs of cafes facing a cobble-stone promenade.

It was supposed to be a state-of-the-art city for 500,000 - but eerie footage shows how a Chinese-built urbanisation is at risk of becoming Africa’s first ’ghost town’.

Constructed on the outskirts of Angola’s capital city Luanda, Nova Cidade de Kilamba has 750 eight-storey blocks of flats, a dozen schools and more than 100 shop units.

Gun enthusiasts want to build it in the mountains of Idaho. They’ve already drawn up plans and are taking applications.

The Honduran supreme court has ruled that privately run cities in the Central American country would be unconstitutional, threatening a project to build "model cities" with their own police, laws, government and tax systems.

As David Cameron continues to progressively dismantle the remnants of the UK planning system, it might be comforting to look overseas, where the history of spatial planning is being celebrated. An exhibition opened this month in San Francisco that charts the visual history and influence of the planning diagram, from the radial spokes of the garden city wheel (which inspired the development of English suburbia) to the New York set-back rule (which generated the city’s stepped skyscrapers).