Landmarks of the Week

Between September 2012 and September 2013 a team from the University of Nairobi, MIT and Columbia rode all of Nairobi's 135 matatu routes with GPS-tracking phones, then converted the data into a modified GTFS loose enough for a system with no calendars, no service frequencies and no operating schedules. A stylised paper map followed in January 2014, which the county government made the official matatu map, and on 26 August 2015 Google switched on matatu directions in Google Maps. The project team calls it the first semi-formal transit system in Google's routing; Google's own announcement said Nairobi joined "the over 2800 towns and cities" with the feature.

Baidu's Apollo Go (萝卜快跑) began operating in Wuhan in May 2022, and in August 2022 won permits for fully driverless commercial rides there and in Chongqing, which Baidu called the first such service in China. By the company's own account the service later covered more than 3,000 square kilometres of the city; in July 2024 Wuhan's transportation bureau put the fleet at 400 robotaxis, not the 1,000 claimed online, as fares of 4 to 16 yuan for a 10-kilometre ride fed a backlash from drivers. On the night of 31 March 2026 Apollo Go cars stalled on roads across the city, leaving some passengers on elevated highways for close to two hours; a preliminary police investigation pointed to a system failure. Commercial service across Wuhan was suspended from 1 April, China stopped issuing new robotaxi permits nationwide, and in August 2026 the service was reported back in three districts.

In 1993 Phnom Penh's water utility lost 72% of what it produced, and only 12.61% of its connections had a meter. From 1994 it began metering every connection, and all were metered by 2001; it enforced billing and put zoned teams on leak control. Losses fell to 6% by 2008 and bill collection rose from 48% to over 98%. Zone telemetry was in place by 2008; the integrated GIS platform came after 2015.

Mexico City started keeping cars off the road one weekday a week by the last digit of their plate in November 1989, after an ozone emergency, and made the rule permanent the following year. A compulsory emissions test every six months assigns each car a hologram, and that reading decides how hard the ban bites: holograms 00 and 0 drive every day, hologram 1 also rests two Saturdays a month, hologram 2 every Saturday. Saturdays were added on 5 July 2008, and when the metropolitan monitoring network pushes ozone past the contingency threshold the regional environment commission declares a 'Fase I' that pulls even exempt cars off the road. Thirty-seven years on, peer-reviewed evaluations have still not found that the air got cleaner.

A driverless elevated light rail line opened in September 2011 over 23 km between Busan's Sasang district and Gimhae, built as a private concession carrying a minimum revenue guarantee. The Korea Transport Institute had forecast 176,358 riders a day at opening; 30,084 came. Busan and Gimhae covered the shortfall, and a 2017 renegotiation swapped the revenue guarantee for cost compensation running to 2041. The two cities paid 906.8 billion won between 2011 and 2025 and owe at least 1.09 trillion more. Ridership has since partly recovered, from 34,752 a day in 2020 to 45,821 in 2024, still below the 2017 peak of 51,654.

The MBTA issued its first CharlieCards on 4 December 2006 and still keeps the balance on the card — the weakness MIT students were sued for describing in 2008 and Medford high-schoolers cloned again in 2023, that time with the agency's help. Its replacement, awarded to Cubic for mid-2020, took bank cards in August 2024. Commuter rail still cannot tap.

Melbourne mapped all 70,000+ street trees with individual IDs, species and health data in its Urban Forest Visual — and citizens started emailing love letters to their favourite trees instead of just fault reports. Data-driven greening with an unexpectedly human side.

In 2017 Shenzhen became, by its authorities' account, the first city to fully electrify its buses — over 16,000 of them — making it one of the largest zero-emission bus operations anywhere. The taxis came later: 99 percent of the city's 21,609 cabs were electric by the end of 2019. The switch rested less on new battery technology than on procurement and a charging backbone built alongside it — about one charging outlet for every three buses. By the end of 2022 the three operators ran 15,896 electric buses on more than 900 routes, and since 2024 the city subsidises replacing buses or whole battery packs once they turn eight.

Since 17 February 2003, drivers entering central London during charging hours pay a daily fee, enforced by ANPR camera rings — a scheme introduced under Mayor Ken Livingstone. The charge rose from £15 to £18 in January 2026, with EV exemptions replaced by a smaller Cleaner Vehicle Discount.

Cable cars integrated into the metro network connected Medellín's informal hillside barrios to the city — the mobility backbone of an urban transformation that other cities in Colombia and Latin America set out to copy. Six Metrocable lines operate today.