Official guidance says ammonia in animal urine should be watered down to stop it corroding bark
A neighbourhood in Vienna has introduced guidelines for dog walking, including the use of bottled tap water to rinse away urine and protect vulnerable trees.
Neubau, an up-and-coming, densely populated district dotted with cafes and galleries, rolled out the Schönes Gassi (nice dog walk) campaign this week.
Above the rain-soaked streets of Warsaw, the observation deck of the Varso tower overlooks Joseph Stalin’s gift to Poland that has divided opinion for decades.
For some, the Soviet-era Palace of Culture and Science is a drunk confectioner’s nightmare; standing as a relic of oppression that should have been demolished. For others, it is an icon on the skyline and a monumental warning from history.
Company hails first step in rolling out technology across UK as first autonomous vehicles take to city’s streets
Uber has begun a trial of autonomous vehicles on the streets of Manchester as it looks to bring robotaxis to cities around the UK.
The first self-driving cars are operating, using the technology of its partner firms Pony and Verne, with whom Uber recently launched Europe’s first autonomous taxi service in the Croatian capital, Zagreb.
Other co-location efforts have proposed combining housing with firehouses, community centers and even museums. But library branches are particularly well-suited for the role because they often boast easy access to transit, shopping and other amenities, says Yonah Freemark, a housing researcher at the Urban Institute. Since 2020, there have been nearly two dozen combined library-housing developments in the US, adding more than 1,800 market-rate, senior and affordable housing units, according to his 2025 report.
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After a two-year court battle, the rezoning plan moved forward and the Inwood Library broke ground in 2021. The facility opened in 2024, with space for early childhood reading programs, English language for adults and tech classes on coding. The new library has become a "fixture of the community," said Anthony Marx, president and CEO of the New York Public Library. "We got a bigger library than we probably would've gotten with a straight replacement. That's ideal, right? Everybody wins."
New York City has been an avid experimenter with the joint library-housing model, with four facilities completed since 2016. Three more are on the way in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn. In June, a city councilmember proposed including $60 million in the city's budget to pair another three libraries with affordable housing.
Filling the Gap
At least a dozen other joint library-housing developments are in the pipeline or under consideration across the US. But the broader US housing shortage is measured in millions.
Libraries alone aren't enough to fill that gap, but Brooks Rainwater, president and CEO of the Urban Libraries Council, thinks combining housing with other city properties more broadly is a good long-term strategy. "When you look at the full scope of publicly owned land within cities, yeah, it can make a dent," said Rainwater, who once led the National League of Cities' solutions center.
Combining libraries with housing development has become increasingly common. In my analysis, I found that since 2000, at least 23 projects have been completed in the US, creating a total of 1,848 apartments. The majority of these projects were completed in the past decade. Seven such projects are now under construction, encompassing 597 new housing units. Two projects have been completed in Canada, with another now under construction. (Other library projects, such as Salt Lake City's Marmalade Branch, are integrated into neighborhood-scale development plans, but aren't specifically integrated into apartment buildings.)
By joining forces, these partners are able to meet their distinct missions in ways they might not otherwise be able to accomplish on their own.
"Libraries are a fantastic community anchor," says David Block, director of development at Evergreen Real Estate Group, which has completed two developments that combine affordable housing with libraries in Chicago and is at work on another in Denver. "The community can really rally around them and say, 'this is ours, and we value this as a place for kids to learn, as a place for seniors to come together, and as a resource for information.'"
Libraries are vital to many members of a community, including people experiencing homelessness. As unsheltered individuals seek safety and warmth within their walls, some sites have even invited social workers or homeless outreach teams to help connect people with food assistance, housing resources, and counseling.
In the latest chapter of this relationship, these community pillars are being built under the same roof with affordable housing to meet the needs of a wide range of individuals, families, and seniors.
The Urban Institute recently reported that more than 1,800 apartments—many of them affordable units—have been built in developments with libraries since 2000. More projects are on the way.
Cities Are Tackling the Housing Crunch—by Building Above the Library - "Cornelius Place offers something else for the community: above the library are 45 apartments intended to be affordable for seniors with household incomes of up to 60 percent of area median income (AMI). Eleven apartments are part of the Section 8 program, making them more deeply affordable by requiring households to pay no more than 30 percent of their income in rent."
Cornelius, a city of 12,400 in metro Portland, anticipates growing by more than one-third in the next five years. Cornelius Place is its first three-story building, first mixed-use building, and an anchor for a new walkable-downtown master plan, says Ryan Wells, community development director. Combining a new public library with affordable senior housing made both projects possible. "There is cost sharing to construction when you mix those uses," says Wells. "We could not have built the library on its own."
A New Chapter for Library Buildings
Boston is renovating several aging library branches and pairing those upgrades with new, multi-story affordable housing developments built on the same footprint. Instead of expanding outward, the city is building upward—preserving the library's role while adding dozens of income-restricted homes above it.
This collaboration between the Boston Public Library, the city's housing department, and nonprofit developers aims to meet two urgent needs at once: more affordable housing and stronger, more accessible community services.
How Housing Above Libraries Works
Libraries already serve as trusted, low-barrier entry points for support. By placing homes directly above them, Boston is creating a built-in connection between residents and the resources that help families thrive.
Some of the benefits include:
Immediate Access to Essential Services. Residents can head downstairs to use high-speed internet, attend job readiness workshops, or meet with community partners who regularly staff the library.
Daily Literacy Opportunities for Children. Kids living in the building can drop in to storytimes, after-school programs, and summer reading activities—all just steps from their front door.
A Sense of Stability and Belonging. Combining housing with a beloved public institution helps reduce stress for families navigating economic uncertainty.
The Monitor's reporting highlights how these buildings become more than just apartments—they become neighborhood hubs, places where families can learn, connect, and feel supported.
Downtown Santa Cruz Library and housing construction continues - "The new library and affordable housing project is being built on a city-owned downtown parking lot bound by Cathcart, Cedar and Lincoln streets. When complete, the project will include 124 units of very low income housing, including studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. The Santa Cruz Public Libraries' new flagship branch will also be built on the site. The 41,000-plus-square-foot facility will include sustainable design, a rooftop deck and large community room. In addition to housing and the library, the site will have about 240 parking spaces, including 25 Level 2 electric vehicle charging stations, 203 bicycle parking spaces and a childcare facility." (Downtown Library & Affordable Housing Project)
On 14 January this year, army and navy squads faced an unprecedented challenge: one bomb on a Plymouth building site, another floating on a dredger in Exmouth. That afternoon, the clock started ticking
Everyone at Exmouth Marina knew there was an unexploded German bomb in the water. Old hands at the dock had been saying so since the end of the second world war. But the marina had been dredged and re-dredged and nothing had ever come up. It had started to sound like an old wives’ tale. The marina is a busy stretch of water: a commercial port until the late 1990s that had since been converted into a home to private yachts. A bomb, you’d think, would have a hard time staying hidden. But in the middle of the afternoon on Wednesday 14 January 2026, 81 years after the end of the second world war, Steve Hockings-Thompson, the manager of Exmouth Marina, got a call from the crew of a dredging vessel telling him he’d better come out to the boat. “I thought: ‘Oh crikey. We’ve got a bit of an issue here,’” Hockings-Thompson told me recently.
He went out to the dredger, a squat barge that hauls silt and other debris from the marina floor on to a flat deck that resembles a steel sieve. Sitting on the deck was a huge hunk of metal, caked in mud and stones. As Hockings-Thompson got closer and saw its distinctive conical shape, he knew it was a bomb – a big one. The dredger was loaded with 20,000 litres of diesel fuel, so if the bomb detonated, it would be disastrous. He called the police, who quickly came to the scene. “And then,” he said, “all hell broke loose.”
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