Europe’s housing costs akin to ‘new pandemic’, warns Barcelona mayor

The Guardian

By:Ashifa Kassam European community affairs commissioner

15 December 2025 at 05:11

Jaume Collboni and 16 other city leaders urge EU to unleash billions in funding as it prepares to tackle crisis

The Guardian view on Europe’s housing crisis: time for the EU to get radical

The soaring cost of housing is akin to a “new pandemic” sweeping across Europe, the mayor of Barcelona has said, as he and 16 other city leaders urged the EU to respond to the crisis by unleashing billions in funding for the hardest-hit areas.

The EU is expected to present its first-ever housing plan on Tuesday, after consultations with experts, stakeholders and the public. For months, those on the frontlines of the crisis have warned the problem is too big to ignore.

Received before yesterday

First revealed in spy photos, a Bronze Age city emerges from the steppe 21 November 2025 at 10:07

First revealed in spy photos, a Bronze Age city emerges from the steppe

Ars Technica

By:Kiona N. Smith

21 November 2025 at 10:07

Today all that’s left of the ancient city of Semiyarka are a few low earthen mounds and some scattered artifacts, nearly hidden beneath the waving grasses of the Kazakh Steppe, a vast swath of grassland that stretches across northern Kazakhstan and into Russia. But recent surveys and excavations reveal that 3,500 years ago, this empty plain was a bustling city with a thriving metalworking industry, where nomadic herders and traders might have mingled with settled metalworkers and merchants.

Photo of two people standing on a grassy plain under a gray sky

Radivojevic and Lawrence stand on the site of Semiyarka. Credit: Peter J. Brown

Welcome to the City of Seven Ravines

University College of London archaeologist Miljana Radivojevic and her colleagues recently mapped the site with drones and geophysical surveys (like ground-penetrating radar, for example), tracing the layout of a 140-hectare city on the steppe in what’s now Kazakhstan.

The Bronze Age city once boasted rows of houses built on earthworks, a large central building, and a neighborhood of workshops where artisans smelted and cast bronze. From its windswept promontory, it held a commanding view of a narrow point in the Irtysh River valley, a strategic location that may have offered the city “control over movement along the river and valley bottom,” according to Radivojevic and her colleagues. That view inspired archaeologists’ name for the city: Semiyarka, or City of Seven Ravines.

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