cities

This cool 3D map of light pollution turns cities into mountains of light

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This 2026 is the year that opens a fantastic period to enjoy astronomical milestones, since the first of the three eclipses planned between 2026 and 2028: it will be next August 12, it will be a historic event in these latitudes (it has been more than a century since the Iberian Peninsula has witnessed a total solar eclipse) and not everyone will be able to see it: It will only be total in a strip. Being in the right place at the right time is only the first step: the next thing to be able to enjoy both the solar eclipse and any astronomical event, or simply to be able to see the stars well and distinguish constellations is total darkness. Or at least, try to be in a place free of light pollution. Getting away from the big cities is the first step as they tend to be the main sources of light, but not the only one: there are many infrastructures that can spoil the experience. Our recommendation if you plan to see the solar eclipse is that you do not leave it to improvisation and be clear about where to go to enjoy it better and here in addition to the map of the National Geological Institute To follow it, it is worth having on hand a good light pollution map. Where the solar eclipse will be seen: areas where it will be total and areas where it will be partial. IGN But does a light bulb next to you bother you so much to see the sky?? Yes, essentially because it is never usually just a light bulb. In fact, it’s not even just too much light. An example: when you approach a city with your car and it is getting dark or it is night, you can see a glow of the sky (skyglow) fruit of the rebound of light against dust particles, humidity and aerosols in the atmosphere, returning as a luminous veil that destroys astronomical observation. The underlying problem is the increase in the brightness of the sky: a star or a nebula does not compete against darkness, but against that background. If the background is brighter, the contrast drops (excepting the distances, it is like cheap TVs with bad backlighting scheme). The heavens are measured by the Bortle scalewhich goes from 1 to 9 where a class 1 sky is the darkest possible, practically a miracle in continental Europe (most medium-sized cities are around 7 – 9). With a class 9 sky you can barely see the brightest stars and the moon. Where not to see the solar eclipse of August 2026 And it does not only affect large cities (in Madrid it can be seen from quite a few kilometers away), but also industrial areas and ports. In these cases, it is also usually permanent lighting without any control. Also the road networks. A picture is worth a thousand words: the map by cartographer and geospatial developer Jacob Wasilkowski and Petrichor Studio called Earth at Night. Earth at night. JWasilGeo & Petrichor Studio This map combines several sources: night light data comes from NASA (Suomi-NPP satellite, VIIRS sensor) and background satellite mapping is provided by Earthstar Geographics along with other commercial providers integrated into Esri’s World Imagery service. The technological infrastructure to render it in 3D is also from Esri, a Californian company specialized in GIS software. Wasilkowski is the one who has put it all together to convert luminosity into topography. Simply put: It has converted the luminosity of NASA’s nighttime images into elevation, so that cities are mountains. The bigger the city, generally the bigger and higher the mountain will be. Note that there are areas, such as northern Italy or the German border with Belgium, that are real garlands. In the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean coast, the Portuguese coast and a point in the middle of everything stand out: Madrid. These are the areas to escape from if we want to see the sky well. Earth at night. JWasilGeo & Petrichor Studio And just the opposite, the valleys are the most interesting areas to observe the eclipse or any other astronomical milestone: they are the dark areas. Although its controls are intuitive, you have options to switch to the satellite layer, you can zoom, pan and rotate. The map is a few years old now, but for those of us who like to observe the sky it is a good idea to always have it at hand. Furthermore, when this map was launched a decade ago it had a great impact on the cartographic community, winning the award GOLD from the KANTAR Information is Beautiful Awards 2019 in the category “Maps, Places and Spaces”, under the name “Earth at Night, Mountains of Light”. And why not say it: it is evocative. After all, it uses real light captured from space to re-sculpt the Earth, letting it be human activity that defines its topography. In Xataka | Solar eclipses visible in Spain: these are the three astronomical events of 2026, 2027 and 2028 In Xataka | Half of Spain waits expectantly for the historic eclipse of August 2026. The authorities are already thinking about the problems Cover | JWasilGeo & Petrichor Studio

The great battle of the Ebro is not between Murcia and Aragón, it is between the headwaters of the rivers, the large cities and the delta

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The image is straight out of a movie: a team of divers diving into the cold waters of the Arija reservoir to dredge more than three meters of silt accumulated in front of its floodgates. It’s not a whim, It’s the only way to remove them.: that is, the consequence of having hundreds of infrastructures that have not been thoroughly maintained for decades. But, above all, the most striking symptom of a very deep problem: the sediments are killing, at the same time, the reservoirs and the rivers. Reservoirs due to loss of capacity (Mequinenza has lost since its opening more capacity than the sum of the last three reservoirs put into operation), rivers because deltas need sediment to stay alive. The Ebro, without going any further, needs 1.2 million tons per year. And the authorities know it. In fact, since 2003, the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation has been carrying out controlled floods in the lower section of the river to mobilize sediments towards Tortosa. The problem is that each controlled flood moves about 10,000 tons; that is, two orders of magnitude below what is necessary. It’s like emptying a swimming pool with a coffee spoon. So in the last few months, something has changed. Since November 2024, the CHE began a series of measures to try to fix it. Things like extending the discharge by two days, starting it from much higher up (El Grado in Huesca and Camarasa in Lleida) and draining Ribarroja more than usual to mobilize all the possible sediments. Will it solve the problem? It’s not clear, but it doesn’t seem like it. We have to take into account that, only in the Ebro basin, there are many reservoirs and that is an inevitable brake. Calculations say that of the five million tons that were brought to the Mediterranean before the reservoirs, only between 100,000 and 200,000 now arrive. It would take around 100 floods to reach the appropriate figures. And no, we don’t have enough water for that. So? That is the big problem, seeing what we do. We must not forget that the Ebro delta supports 20,000 hectares of rice fieldstens of thousands of inhabitants and is a biosphere reserve. The loss of wetlands and their salinization have a direct impact on agriculture, fishing and tourism. Come on: the interests are crossed and they confront people hundreds of kilometers away. We are entering a new era of hydrological wars in which we are all against each other. Image | Sinto MQZ In Xataka | The Ebro is filling with brown prawns, an invasive species that we are going to find more and more on our plates.

Spanish cities are collapsed because they were not designed to go “from the periphery to the periphery”

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For decades, commuting to work in large Spanish cities had a clear logic: workers lived on the outskirts of large cities and They traveled every morning towards the center to their jobs. It was a fairly stable urban model, reinforced by transportation networks designed to take workers to the large office districts of the urban area. However, in recent years this pattern has been changing as the price of land in the center has skyrocketed and companies have also had to move to the periphery. As and as it portrays The Countrythe problem is that cities are not designed to move from periphery to periphery, and that movement has become in a daily mousetrap for millions of employees. In recent years, many companies have chosen to move your offices to peripheral areas where land is cheaper and there is space to build large office complexes. This movement has made it possible to build huge business campuses that would be unviable in the urban centers of large cities with high demand for land such as Madrid or Barcelona. In Madrid, the north of the city has become one of the main destinations for this type of projects. An example is the Telephone Districtlocated in Las Tablas, which occupies about 22 hectares and concentrates more than 12,000 workers in a single business complex. The records of the Residence-Work Mobility Atlas of the Community of Madrid show that districts such as Fuencarral-El Pardo (where the Telefónica District is located) are already among the areas with the highest concentration of employment in the region. Barcelona experienced a similar process with the development of 22@ technological district in Poblenou, where numerous technology companies and corporate headquarters have been setting up shop in the last two decades. The transformation of this old industrial neighborhood created a new employment center outside the historic center of the city. Employment is moving, but so are prices The problem with this migration of companies to the periphery of urban centers is that when thousands of workers begin to concentrate in a specific area, the real estate market usually reacts quickly. Proximity to work centers increases the value of neighborhoods nearby, which ends up raising rental and housing prices. This increase, in turn, forces employees to move to municipalities even further away from the city center and the offices where they work. The result is a constant increase in daily trips within the metropolitan area. In Madrid this phenomenon is reflected in the labor mobility figures. According to the recorded data According to the Mobility Atlas of the Community of Madrid, every day 1.2 million people enter the capital from other municipalities to work, compared to the 790,000 who did so in 2016. Something similar is happening in the city of Barcelona, which after the growth of 22@ has attracted workers from numerous municipalities in the metropolitan area, congesting the northern and southern access roads and the city’s ring roads due to the traffic generated by these employees at peak hours, such as and how collect traffic congestion report of Inrix of 2025. All these congestion problems have their origin in the fact that the large transport infrastructures (metros, trams, Cercanías, bus lines, etc.) of the large Spanish cities have been designed for decades with a radial structure. They were planned to connect the peripheral neighborhoods with the city center, which was where most of the employment was concentrated. When new business centers began to grow outside the center, that structure began to show its limitations. Many workers no longer need to go to the urban area, but rather travel between peripheral areas that are not directly connected by public transport. A very clear example of this is the demand of the residents of Tres Cantos for an axis that connects them with… The A-6, not with the center of Madrid. This requires long journeys or several transfers, something that often makes the car faster. Even if it means getting stuck every day on the way to work. Furthermore, public transportation in many cities has become a lottery with constant delays and breakdownswhich generates uncertainty when considering alternatives to the private car. The increase in long trips to work and dependence on the car is clearly reflected in traffic data. According to the TomTom Traffic IndexMadrid registered an average congestion level of 38% in 2025, which is 3.6 percentage points more than the previous year. That level of traffic means that traveling 10 kilometers during rush hour can take about 34 and a half minutes, at average speeds. close to 17.5 km/h. The report also estimates that Madrid drivers lose around 98 hours a year in traffic jams during rush hours. When daily journeys are long, the accumulated time can multiply and reach up to 500 hours per year per person lost in traffic jams. Barcelona faces a similar situationwith a level of congestion in its urban center and access roads of 41.1%, which is one of the highest figures in Europe. In Xataka | The worst traffic jam in history: two weeks, more than 100 kilometers and thousands of cars detained in China Image | Commons

Iran has spent decades excavating its “missile cities.” Satellite images have just revealed that they are a death trap

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For years, Iran has shown the world tunnel videos endless tunnels dug under mountains, with military trucks circulating between missiles lined up as if they were cars in an underground subway. It was understood that many of these facilities extend kilometers underground and are part of one of the military fortification programs. most ambitious in the Middle East. What almost no one knew until now is to what extent this gigantic hidden labyrinth could become a key piece of the current conflict. The cities, but with missiles. Yes, for decades, Iran has excavated an extensive underground base network known as “missile cities”, complexes hidden under mountains and hills intended to protect its enormous ballistic arsenal against air attacks and guarantee the regime’s retaliation capacity even in the event of open war. There are numerous videos Officials released in recent years where we could see long tunnels illuminated by artificial lights, windowless corridors and convoys of trucks loaded with missiles ready to move to the surface, an entire military architecture designed to hide thousands of short and medium range projectiles away from spy satellites and enemy bombers. Some installations even incorporate silos dug into the rock or mechanical systems on rails to move missiles within underground galleries, a perfectly assembled choreography reflecting a strategic project conceived to ensure arsenal survival Iranian in a protracted conflict. The images that reveal the paradox. However, the war has begun to show the unexpected reverse of that strategy. Recent images from space have revealed Smoldering remains of destroyed launchers and missiles near the entrances to several underground complexes, a sign that systems hidden underground are becoming extremely vulnerable at the moment when they must go outside to shoot. It makes sense. American and Israeli surveillance planes, armed drones and fighters They patrol constantly over the areas where these facilities are located, observing the entrances to the tunnels and attacking the launchers as soon as they appear on nearby roads or canyons. In other words, what for years was a system designed to hide mobile weapons It thus becomes a relatively predictable pattern: tunnel entrances, exit roads and deployment areas that can be monitored from the air and destroyed as soon as activity is detected. From strategic refuge to death trap. They remembered in the wall street journal A few hours ago this change has revealed a structural problem in the very concept of missile cities. Underground complexes are very difficult to destroy from the air, but they are also fixed installations whose location is known by Western intelligence services. In practice, this means that much of the arsenal remains stored in specific places while enemy planes continually fly over the airspace, waiting for the moment when the launchers come out to act. Many military analysts summarize the dilemma in a simple way: What was previously a mobile and difficult to locate system is now concentrated in fixed points, which facilitates its surveillance and reduces its capacity for surprise. Commercial satellite images themselves show destroyed launchers As soon as they left the mouths of the tunnels, fires were caused by leaked fuel and access to facilities bombed with heavy ammunition. Missile base north of Tabriz in Iran. The image on the left belongs to February 23, the one on the right from March 1 after the first attacks The air offensive against underground infrastructure. As the first week of war approaches, the military campaign has begun to focus increasingly on these infrastructures. They told Reuters that the first phase of the attacks focused on destroying visible launchers and surface systems capable of firing at Israel or US bases in the region, while the second stage aims straight to the bunkers and buried warehouses where missiles and equipment are stored. Israeli aviation, with American support, has attacked hundreds of positions and has managed to drastically reduce the number of launches, while an almost constant air offensive that hits targets continues. both in Iran and Lebanon during the same missions. The stated objective is to progressively degrade Iran’s ability to launch ballistic missiles and drones until it is completely neutralized. Missile base north of Kermanshah in Iran. The image on the left belongs to February 28, on the right it belongs to March 3 A gigantic arsenal underground. The actual scope of these facilities remains difficult to determine. There are military estimates that place the Iranian arsenal before the war between about 2,500 and up to 6,000 missilesstored in different facilities throughout the country, many of them excavated under mountains or in remote areas of the territory. Despite the attacks, Iran has managed to launch more than 500 missiles against Israel, US bases and targets in the Gulf since the start of the conflict, although many have been intercepted and the pace of salvos has decreased rapidly. That drop suggests that attacks on launchers and storage centers are beginning to erode the country’s ability to respond. The strategic dilemma. The result is a strategic paradox that is just beginning to become visible. Missile cities were designed to protect the core of Iranian military power and ensure its ability to retaliate, but in a scenario where the enemy dominate the air and watch constantly the entrances to these complexes can become choke points for the arsenal itself. Iran has spent decades excavating these underground bases with the intention of making its missiles invisible. But satellite images of the war are showing something very different: that this labyrinth of tunnels, designed as a shelter, can become one of its greatest vulnerabilities when the launchers are forced to surface under the look constant flow of planes, drones and satellites. Image | X, Planet Labs In Xataka | We had seen everything in Ukraine, but this is new: neither drones nor missiles, bulldozers have reached the front In Xataka | You’ve probably never heard of urea. The missiles in Iran are destroying their production, and that will affect your food

that it connects cities is the least of it

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If we stick to surprising infrastructures, China has a good handful that end up leaving you breathless. Bridges that cross entire bays, trains that connect cities at 350 km/h, airports built in record time…And Tianfu Avenue, in Chengdu, also has a special place in this list of mega-constructions. At 150 kilometers long, it is the longest central urban axis in the world. And its history says a lot about how China understands 21st century urbanism. Where does the name come from? Tianfu refers to the historical nickname of Sichuan province: “Land of Plenty.” A region known since ancient times for its fertility and cultural wealth, and whose capital, Chengdu, has been one of the great economic engines of the west of the country for decades. Click on the image to go to the post ORa normal street that was growing. In 1960, the then vice mayor of Chengdu supervised the construction of the Renmin Road, a road 64 meters wide. In 1997, the arrival of the Tianfu interchange, a large elevated infrastructure that passed over the railway tracks in an arc, extended that artery to the south and marked the beginning of what we know today as Tianfu Avenue. In 2004, the municipal government formalized its name and divided it into northern, central and southern sections, although the true transformation would come later. de avenue to metropolitan corridor. In 2012, Chengdu proposed something much more ambitious: turning Tianfu into a “hundred-mile central hub.” The idea was to connect not just neighborhoods or districts, but entire cities. In 2016, the project was expanded further: the route would reach Deyang in the north and Renshou, in Meishan, in the south. The final result is a 150 kilometer road that crosses four different administrative territories. A colossus of cement and metal. In some sections reaches 14 or 16 lanesincluding expressways, local lanes and dividing strips. It has wide sidewalks, bike lanes, garden areas and overpasses at the busiest intersections. In the high-tech zone section, for example, it was renovated in 2022 to become an urban linear park with eight smaller parks, six kilometers of promenade and two large entrance nodes. And all this without interrupting traffic on one of the busiest arteries in the city. What there is along the route. Along its route there are also emblematic points of interest. For example, the New Century Global Center, considered one of the individual buildings largest in the world by constructed area; Xinglong Lake, with a surface area of ​​more than 66 hectares, known as the “green heart of the city”; or the Tianfu interchange mentioned above, a two-kilometer-long structure whose “A”-shaped pylon reaches 78 meters high. At its top is the emblem of the Sun Bird, a symbol of the ancient Jinsha culture. Its economic role. Tianfu Avenue is not a typical infrastructure project. It is, above all, an instrument of economic development. It connects the Chengdu Plain Economic Zone with the Southern Sichuan Economic Zone, two of the most dynamic poles in the region. Along its route there are technology parks, multinational headquarters, financial centers and the Tianfu New Area, a state development zone created with the intention of attracting innovation and sustainable urbanism. According to a report of Southwest Jiaotong University, the avenue is called to be “the north-south economic axis of Sichuan”, beyond its function as a highway connecting cities. The project is not finished. In January 2025, the Renshou section was opened to traffic, completing a key section of the route. In January 2023, Meishan and Zigong they signed an agreement to extend the avenue even further south, passing through Luzhou and reaching Jiangjin, in Chongqing. If this project prospers, the total length of the corridor could exceed 400 kilometers, becoming a fast axis that connects the two great poles of southwest China: Chengdu and Chongqing. In Xataka | Valencia is building an emergency-proof “water highway” so that DANA outages do not happen again

Tokyo is one of the few cities in the world that has managed to maintain housing prices. His secret: build

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“If you can’t solve a problem, make it bigger.” This oft-repeated maxim (and mistakenly coined for Dwight D. Eisenhower) can be good advice when it comes to housing: Expanding the scope of a problem can make new solutions possible. Japan is the world’s best example of an advanced industrial democracy with abundance of affordable housing with low carbon emissions. To build. The key to Japan’s success is its unusual degree of national control over zoning and building rules. Centralized authority trumps local housing obstructionism. Tokyo builds more housing in a year than all of California or all of England, which have 3 or 4 times its population. In the largest megalopolis in the world, the way Rents stay low in the long term is to build. National decisions. The political scientist Grant McConnell wrote on the classic articulation of the view that the national government is more likely to solve difficult problems than state or local governments. Small can be beautiful, the reasoning goes, but it can also be provincial, backward and oligarchic. This logic fits well with the housing issue: Putting much more at stake, all at once, in one big fight, rather than piece by piece in hundreds of separate local fights, could disrupt the housing war. More homes around the world. The world has provided some examples of this. Japan has had extraordinary success in housing construction. He has long been a leader and expanded his leadership even further in recent years. Germany, Austria and Switzerland have always had good records, behind Japan but still performing well. France has stepped up, at least in Paris. These countries generally employ rule-based (or “by right”) building permit systems: if your plans check the stipulated boxes, building authorities have no choice but to sign. The Anglo-Saxons. On the other hand, English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and New Zealand, are lagging behind. Their permit systems are often more discretionarygiving local officials the power to approve or reject buildings at will. In many parts of these countries, especially their large cities, housing is expensive because it is scarce. For now, the Anglosphere suffers the worst housing shortages and prices. The Japanese case. The Asian country is the best example of the maxim of “magnifying” problems. Japan’s national government controls the use of land and buildings to a greater extent than national authorities in other countries. This control has grown in recent decades, even as other nations have gone into lockdown. The number of homes built per year in industrial democracies has fallen by more than 60% since 1970, according to The Economist. Meanwhile, housing construction in Japan has remained solid at all timesbroad public interest in abundant housing has triumphed over obstructionism. What did they do? To boost construction and lower prices, Japan redoubled efforts to allow more housing construction. He resorted, in particular, to administrative changes in building codes. “To help the economy recover from the bubble, the country eased the regulation of urban development,” explained Hiro Ichikawa, a construction development advisor. in the Financial Times. “If it hadn’t been for the bubble, Tokyo would be in the same situation as London or San Francisco.” Build, build and build. The results, in abundant housing, low prices and low carbon urban formswalkable and transit-focused, are notable. The city of Tokyo had 13.5 million residents in 2018. But the city built 145,000 new residences that year. Tokyo’s achievement was particularly surprising considering that the prefecture has very little vacant land, so almost all of those 145,000 homes were located in an existing neighborhood. The astonishing pace of housing construction in the capital has continued for years. Tokyo routinely builds more new homes than all of California (which has three times its population) or, in some years, all of England (which has four times its population). It has increased housing construction by 30% since the turn of the century, even as its population peaked and began to decline in 2007. disposable houses. It is true that Japan demolishes houses much earlier than other industrialized countriesso a large portion of their housing starts are replacement housing. But the much criticized Japanese culture of “disposable houses” It is actually one of the secrets of its success. Japan’s rigorous and up-to-date earthquake safety laws, plus a cultural attachment to new homes, mean that tiny houses in Japan often depreciate completely in just 30 years and are replaced soon after. Because housing is renovated quickly, the country has a much better chance of installing larger buildings. In parts of the US, where buildings typically have an economic life of 100 years, you only have one chance per century to replace a house with an apartment building. In Japan, you get three. More housing. The prefecture has tripled its stocks of housing in the last 50 years and has expanded the number of residences in the city by about 2% annually since 2000. In fact, its overall housing unit growth rate was three times faster than London or New York in the 2010s. Among the 14 megacities around the world, only Singapore and Seoul surpassed Tokyo in the pace of overall housing growth. Thanks to the Japanese program to govern housing, Tokyo Prefecture and the world’s largest metropolis have completely avoided residential closures. Japan seems to have learned the maxim attributed to Eisenhower: if you can’t solve a problem, make it bigger. In Xataka | In its crazy rise in housing prices, Madrid has just broken a barrier: that of the most expensive apartment in its history In Xataka | Tenants and owners are not the same type of Spaniards: some pay €400 more than others for the same home Image | Yu Kato

Japan has a problem with bear attacks in its cities. So they have started eating them

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If it is true that every crisis hides an opportunity, in Japan they have taken it to a new dimension. For some time now, the country of the rising sun has been dealing with a serious problem of bear attacks on humans, which has left more than a dozen victims since last spring. The authorities have been searching for some time the way to solve itbut there are those who have already found a way to benefit from it: the psychosis due to encounters with plantigrades is coming accompanied by what seems to be a growing interest in their meat. In Japan the (gastronomic) taste for these animals it’s not newbut there are hoteliers who they assure that demand is growing so much that they are unable to satisfy it. And they are clear about the reason: the news about attacks. Beware of the bears. Japan has long grappled with a serious problem birth rate, a trend that comes accompanied by the abandonment of rural areas and farmlands. That’s nothing new. Nor anything that Spain (and many other countries) has experienced firsthand. What is curious is the effect that this population decline is causing, combined with other factors, such as climate change, fluctuations in harvests and the increase in the populations of certain wild animals: an ‘epidemic’ of human bear attacks. One figure: 13 dead. With more bears prowling through the mountains, when acorns are scarce, the animals choose to approach towns and cities… with the risk that this implies. Sometimes his encounters with humans remain just that, scares, like what happened in october when a 1.4 m specimen sneaked into a supermarket in Numata. Other times the outcome is more tragic. According to the Government, between April and November 13 people died by claws and bites from these animals. To them are added 230 injured. It is the worst balance since the country began studying the phenomenon in 2006. Is the problem that serious? Yes. The figures are eloquent. And not only those of attacks, injuries and deaths. The japanese press (even the international) has been echoing the increase in sightings of bears, the increase in captured specimens and the problem that these animals are beginning to represent, which has led companies to look for ways to protect their employees and administrations to consider strategies to address the problem. Proof of how desperate the Government is is that it has approved emergency hunts and even has turned to the army. 13 deaths may not be a high number in a country of almost 123 million of inhabitants, but it is high enough to set off alarms, especially in certain regions. There are basically two species in the country: Asian black bears and brown bears, which can be found in Hokkaido and whose population has skyrocketed in the last three decades, reaching 11,500 individuals. according to The Japan Times. A delicious threat. All of the above was more or less known. In recent weeks local media such as The Mainichi, The Asashi Shimbun, NHK World Japan However, they have published articles that suggest something else: that in the midst of a wave of attacks, the Japanese seem to be rediscovering the pleasure of a good slice of grilled bear. a few days ago The Japan Times He even spoke with the owners of a restaurant located in a mountainous area of ​​Saitama who say they are having difficulty meeting the growing demand for meat. “With the increase in news about bears, the number of customers who want to eat their meat has increased,” explains to the newspaper the head of the business, Koji Suzuki. His wife confirms that they have even been forced to turn away clients. Another Sapporo restaurant presume also of the success of their “bear soup” and in Aomori there is a population that is promoting wild bear meat as a local gastronomic specialty. Those who promote the use of bear meat from the sector claim that it is a local and they insist in the usefulness of using the meat of slaughtered animals. Is it something new? Yes. And no. As Suzuki and Katsushiko Kakuta, a restaurant manager in Aomori, explain, bear meat seems to be arousing special interest among the Japanese, but for them it is not a new product. Does five years in Nishimeya (Aomori) they even opened a center to process meat from wild bears captured in the Shirakami-Sanchi mountains. And in 2023 in Akita they installed neither more nor less than a vending machine which sells 250 g of fresh meat from bears caught by hunters in the region for 2,200 yen. “Most say it’s delicious”. Kiyoshi Fujimoto, Sapporo chef, confesses that, in your opinion“now there are more people” interested in his bear meat-based recipe. What’s more, he assures that “most people who try it say it’s delicious.” The truth is that in Japan not only attacks and victims have increased. The captures of animals have also done so, which has forced the authorities to face the challenge of what to do with their corpses. Chosun remember that, although there are restaurants in the country that serve their meat, the law is restrictive on the consumption of slaughtered bears, so many end up incinerated. Images |Lucas Law (Unsplash), Adam Kolmacka (Unsplash) and Suzi Kim (Unsplash) In Xataka | A Japanese restaurant has taken its obsession with fresh fish to the extreme: it lets you catch it yourself

The director of the DGT says that in the future cars will not enter cities. It’s more of a wish than a reality

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Today is January 14, 2026 but, really, it doesn’t matter when you read this: Pere Navarro, director of the DGT, is once again in the news for some controversial statements. We could have titled this article that way, in fact, because the truth is that every time the Director of Traffic speaks at an event broadcast by the media there is something to scratch. This time it was at an event organized by Europa Press where Navarro showed off this particular superpower. There, he has assured the following: “We are all day with emissions, yes emissions, no such and such. Don’t look, you don’t go to the city center with electric, diesel or gasoline. Let’s not make a mistake. You go with public transportation and if you’re in a hurry, taxi, Uber or Cabify” They are literal words. There is no possible misinterpretation or audio cuts to take the message out of context. You can check it yourself in the tweet that accompanies this article. Click on the image to go to the original tweet The words clearly point to an ambition: to get the car out of the city center. It doesn’t matter if it’s gasoline, diesel or electric. There is a goal and that goal is vehicle sharing and public transportation. We could put our hands on our heads. We could say that they want to prohibit us from moving where the elites want. Of course, there will be those who relate this to 15 minute cities. However, we have been hearing similar messages for so long and the measures to be taken have been so lukewarm that, without fear of being wrong, I say: calm down. Once again, the same old thing This is not the first time, far from it, that we have heard this type of message from the director of the DGT. For two years, news and articles have been recurring that point to supposed prohibitions on using our cars if they are only occupied by one person. One of the most repeated formulas is found in these words from Navarro himself at an event called Global Mobility Call held in Madrid in 2024: “The future of traffic will be shared or it will not be (…) we must make a collective change in mentality that allows us to encourage high vehicle occupancy, because we cannot afford to move 1,500 kg every day to move a single person. Increasing vehicle occupancy is a challenge and a necessity” Navarro too has come to be described as “luxury” moving a single person in a vehicle. And in November he insisted again in that it doesn’t matter if the car is electric or not because the future of cities depends on public transport. However, the DGT has not taken any action that points in this direction nor is there anything on the table to debate it. The closest thing is the creation of a Bus-HOV lane at the entrance to Madrid where cars with two or more people traveling inside are rewarded. And that in 2019 it was also advocated from the DGT magazine for a city “with more pedestrians and fewer cars.” The statements have also been used to fill the network with articles pointing out that we will not be able to enter the center of our cities by car, linking them with the creation of low-emission zones. But the truth is that these low-emission zones have a very limited scope. In some of them, such as Madrid or Barcelonavehicles without a label are prevented from entering, but either there are exceptions or they allow all cars with a label to enter the very center of the city. It is true that sometimes you are forced to park in a parking lot but the passage, if our car has at least label Bit is open. Despite many statements by the DGT, the truth is that the efforts to reduce or not reduce traffic in cities go through the municipal corporations of each place. A context that has led to turning the issue of urban mobility into a political weapon. To the point of defending that traffic jams can be “a hallmark” of a city. The comparison between Madrid and Barcelona are two good examples. In the capital, the Popular Party won an election by ensuring that it was going to lift all circulation restrictions, something he didn’t do and that, in fact, he maintained to eliminate all unmarked cars (regardless of whether the driver lives in Madrid or not) from the city. Barcelona en Comú promoted a completely different way of understanding the city in Barcelona, ​​betting on pedestrianization, reduction of lanes in the city center and the creation of what are known as Superilles. It has also been promoted to be more aggressive and fence off the entrance to the city from the most polluting vehicles. Two different approaches that, however, have given a very similar result. And the measures against the car have been very lukewarm. In both cities, if the vehicle has an environmental label it can circulate inside, just taking into account a series of obligations that, in practice, barely change our daily lives. In Madrid, the idea of ​​preventing unlabeled cars from being banned was finally scrapped (as long as they are registered in Madrid). And prohibiting entry to city centers with cars is not something that is catching on in Europe either. Yes, the main cities have restrictions and barriers that discourage its use, but in all of them you can continue to travel to the city center by car. In London you want reduce traffic with tollsin Paris punishing street parking and in Berlin you are also forced to drive with certain modern vehicles. Be that as it may, the only certainty is that total prohibitions do not come and if citizens end up leaving their cars aside in the cities it is because they have been transversal jobs in different areas and sustained over timewith investments … Read more

While all cities are removing their last phone booths, Mexico City is putting them back

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The 21st century is that of smartphonesInternet, networks, 24/7 365 connectivity, virality and immediacy, a scenario in which telephone booths seem like an almost antediluvian vestige. Spain began to retire them a few years agoalthough many had been out of play for some time, vandalized, converted into little more than billboard posts. After all… Who wants a cabin when most of us walk around with a cell phone in our pockets? In Mexico you have the answer. In fact, the country is so convinced that booths make sense that it is installing hundreds and hundreds in its streets. What has happened? That Mexico is doing something (apparently) extemporaneous in the era of smartphonesInternet, social networks and permanent connectivity: the public company CFE Telecomunicaciones is installing hundreds of telephone booths. The diary Expansion talks about 848distributed mainly in the southeast of the country, in states such as Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas. It’s actually nothing surprising. In February 2024 CFE already announced their plans to “roll out” telephone booths throughout the country. But… Why? Because even though in 2026 the smartphones have become masters and lords of our pockets, not everyone has one, nor does they feel comfortable handling them. With the cabins CFE wants precisely that: to close the “generational or digital gap” in the country and “guarantee the connection” of the entire population. Hence, telephone poles are being installed especially in rural areas after reaching agreements with local authorities. “The project adds an alternative to guarantee the connection of the population who, due to the generational or digital divide, may see their communication with their loved ones affected,” claims the company. The idea, precise The Countryis that the phones can be accessed at no cost and the devices also offer an Internet connection and the possibility of making calls outside of Mexico, to the US or Canada. On your website CFE recalls that the project is carried out with “institutional linkage” and agreements with local administrations. And how many cabins are there? That is one of the most curious details of the initiative. And also those who have given the most talk. Expansion assures that CFE Telecomunicaciones has installed at least 848 booths, especially in the southeast, but the same media recalls that throughout Mexico there are still thousands of the old booths that people went to years ago, before cell phones and WhatsApp radically changed our way of communicating. Are they all the same? According to the Federal Telecommunications Institute, in December there were still 580,199 cabinsa considerable number, although they represent 10.6% less than in 2019. The majority are in the hands of Telmex, although the firm BBG Comunicación is also present in the market. This inheritance has not been without controversy, especially due to the state of some booths. Not long ago the Congress of Mexico City proposed withdrawal and dismantling cabins that are disused, abandoned or obsolete. The reason: from being key pieces for communication, they have become annoying obstacles that hinder pedestrian crossing and generate a bad image. It may seem exaggerated, but according to authorities’ calculationsin the country there are thousands of population centers that still have “public telephony” and most of their facilities “no longer function correctly.” Many of the booths are not removed despite being obsolete because prevents it an agreement from the 90s. Do you all agree? Although the country seems determined To find a way to end the digital divide, not everyone considers that the installation of new booths in rural areas will be the solution. This is what Jorge Bravo, for example, from the Mexican Association of the Right to Information warns (Amedi), who warns that the booths are part of an anachronistic connectivity model. “There are no clear criteria for the installation of these cabins. Although I have observed some in good condition, I have never seen people using the service,” he says. Images | Honorable Municipal Council of Silacayoápam (Facebook) and Mateusz D (Unsplash) In Xataka | Americans have been devouring pizza for generations. Now they are changing them for something else: Mexican food

the architects determined to make Spanish cities beautiful again

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The location, the region, almost not even the type of city matters. Whether you are in Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Vigo or Jerez de la Frontera, the most likely thing is that if you take a walk through the streets of the center you will find the same image: asymmetrical facadesirregular, full of holes and patches. They have not been designed like this nor are they the work of any eccentric architect. This apparent aesthetic incoherence is the result of decades of arbitrary enclosures by apartment owners. The logic is simple: you have a terrace that doesn’t quite convince you, so you choose to fence it. The problem is that you do it on your own, without agreeing with the rest of the neighbors, and in the end the facades end up becoming an architectural pastiche. And with them (in addition) the set of cities. The phenomenon is frequent enough that there are people commenting on it on networks and specialized forums in urban planning: ‘Tetris-style’ enclosures are rampant in Spanish cities. The images may change from one location to another, but a walk through any urban area usually comes to find facades altered without rhyme or reason. Here is an untouched terrace. There is another one closed with aluminum carpentry and translucent glass. Two floors below, another that has opted for wood and an awning. Much more than facades Do they pose a problem? They are certainly cause for debate. First, because of its regulatory framework. Is it legal for each owner to do what they want with their terrace, without taking into account the rest of the community? What steps should you take if you want to do it correctly? Second, because beyond the block in question, the amalgams of enclosures influence something much more important: the urban landscapearchitectural coherence and visual hygiene, values ​​that are usually very careful in sensitive areassuch as historic centers and protected buildingsbut which are often neglected in the rest of the city. One of the voices that has commented the most on the phenomenon of indiscriminate closures is the X account @MadridProyecta, which has warned about “‘Zero zones’ of lack of control” either flagrant cases in which they have completely distorted the original appearance of the properties. This phenomenon leads them to warn of the “vertical shanty town”a problem that does not occur homogeneously throughout the Spanish geography (it is less frequent on the Cantabrian coast, for example), but it does condition the urban reality of the country’s cities. “It has a serious impact on the urban landscape of Spain,” they acknowledge from Madrid Proyecta before remembering that in other latitudes of Spain it is less common to encounter indiscriminate closures. The reason? In addition to the regulatory framework of each country and cultural differences, there is another fundamental factor that comes into play, recalls María José Peñalver, treasurer of the Superior Council of the Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE): the antiquity of the building stock and its maintenance. Click on the image to go to the tweet. In 2023 the National Federation of Real Estate Associations analyzed the country’s constructions and estimated that the average age of the used housing stock in Spain around 43.5 years oldwhich among other issues explains why two of the problems that were most frequently pointed out are the scarcity of outdoor space and the poor insulation thermal. Both issues are closely related to enclosures, which They are usually carried out precisely to gain square meters or improve the comfort and soundproofing of homes. That a good part of the homes in Spain are over 40 years old It is a relevant fact because they were built before the regulations on thermal conditions were applied. According to the INE, nearly 40% of the buildings that were used for housing in 2011 had been built between the 60s and 80s. It is not a problem exclusive to Spain (85% of the blocks of the EU were built before 2000 and many of them have low energy performance), but it is a relevant fact when analyzing the phenomenon of enclosures in cities. Another key aspect is the regulatory framework. A quick search on the Internet turns up a good number of guides and articles that try to clarify whether or not it is legal to close a terrace and what requirements must be met to do so, which gives an idea of ​​the high interest that the topic arouses. The simplest answer is: depends. It depends on the peculiarities of each case, what you want to do and, above all, what the community has decided before. The explanation must be sought in the law of laws regarding coexistence in buildings: the Horizontal Property Law (LPH), which in its seventh article sends a notice to sailors: “The owner of each apartment or premises may modify the architectural elements (…) when it does not undermine or alter the safety of the building, its structure, configuration or external state“. Closing a terrace can directly affect the exterior of the property and alter the façade. Furthermore, as remember Idealistalthough the terraces are for private enjoyment, many of their parts, such as the roof or coatings, are part of the common elements. In the article 10.3 and 17.4 of the LPH, in fact, it is recalled that one of the actions that must have authorization are closures, subject to the approval of three-fifths of the community. “The LPH considers that closing a balcony represents an alteration of the façade, being a common element that conditions the overall image of the building. To make a change of such magnitude it is necessary to obtain the consent of the community, so it is not a strictly personal decision,” comment the architect and urban planner Albert Nogueras in elDiario, where he recalls the need to also keep municipal ordinances in mind (which may vary from one city council to another), and the statutes approved by the community itself. The guides Regarding closures, they remind us of … Read more

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