This week, Apolitical is launching our Smart Cities and Urban Planning newsfeed, in partnership with the Bernard Van Leer Foundation, at the NACTO Designing Cities conference 2018 in Los Angeles.

To help you discover the feed, we've pulled out some of our favourite stories about cities. And if there's something we should be covering, let us know by email, or on Twitter.

In Medellin, cable cars transformed slums — in Rio, they made them worse
Residents were ignored and money was misspent when Rio brought public transit to favelas.

How Cape Town stopped the taps running dry: lessons from a water crisis
With rising temperatures, droughts are set to hit ever more cities worldwide.

One of London’s poorest boroughs is showing the rest how to do data
Barking and Dagenham's groundbreaking scheme opens up data for local people and businesses

The public is helping make policy: how much power should they have?
Crowdsourcing tools that consult citizens can give too much weight to loud voices

Thousands of young people are using Minecraft to redesign their cities
A UN program uses the game to include youth, women and the urban poor in planning

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