From glow-in-the-dark trees to underground bike sheds and solar-powered bins, we look at some of the more leftfield solutions to help make our cities more livable. City living has many upsides but a sustainable lifestyle is increasingly not among them. Pollution, traffic and loss of green spaces are just some of the daily trials that city-dwellers have to deal with. Step forward the inventors. We consider ten of the wackier solutions to making our cities more livable. 1 Pop-up parks Today’s cities sometimes look like they’re built more for cars than people. The pop-up park is a simple idea. Take an empty car park, a pocketful of change and a pot plant or two, and make yourself your own private park. The PARK(ing) project kicked off as an arts experiment in San Francisco and has since spread across the world. Temporary urban farms and ecology demos are just some of the ideas to have emerged out of the movement, which celebrates a day of action every September. 2 Subterranean storage Not all urban dwellers are hooked to the car. Bikes are ever more in vogue. The question is: where to keep it safe? Tokyo-based engineering firm Giken has come up with a concept for a solution: an “ecocycle, anti-seismic underground bicycle park”. At just seven metres wide, the cylindrical storage facility buries deep enough into the ground to house 204 bikes. Owners can retrieve their