The best city stories from around the web this week discover a five-storey building in China made using a 3D printer, explore a futuristic idea for a fully sustainable city in the desert and reveal the safest cities in the world.

We’d love to hear your responses to these stories and any others you’ve read recently, both at Guardian Cities and elsewhere: share your thoughts in the comments below.

Print your own apartment

A construction firm from Shanghai has unveiled what they are calling “the world’s tallest 3D-printed building”: a five-storey apartment building made using a 3D printer. The building is on display at the Suzhou Industrial Park, alongside a 3D-printed neoclassical mansion.

As CityLab explains, the buildings are created with a patented “ink” consisting of recycled construction waste, which is then coursed through a printer that is 150 metres long. Could printing our homes be a realistic solution to the housing crises facing cities around the world?

High Line ‘em up

It feels now as if every month, another “High Line” project is proposed in cities wishing to emulate the success of the original park in New York. CityMetric rounds up the ideas and attempts – from the Peckham Coal Line in London to São Paulo’s transformed “Minhocão” motorway and an elevated pedestrian park in Seoul.

The ideal desert city

Italian architect Luca Curci has come up with a proposal for a fully self-sufficient city located in a desert. As Fast Co Exist explains, the design of the city means its residents share all of the resources, from renewable energy to recycled wastewater. The city consists of a network of circular buildings, powered by solar energy and cooled by wind-harvesting devices. Other features include shared electric cars and drinking water provided through desalination.

However, the design is still very much hypothetical. “This is a project proposal for a new way to live in the desert,” Curci explains. “There are many ways to save and reuse available resources.”

Safe cities

The Economist Intelligence Unit has published a report on safety in cities – The Safe Cities Index 2015 – which has scored cities across four categories: digital security; health security; infrastructure safety; and personal safety. An infographic of the key findings shows that Tokyo and Singapore rate as the safest cities in the world. But is safety the most important ingredient of city life? With all its rules and restrictions, Singapore doesn’t necessarily sound like the most enjoyable place to live ...

Photographing Berlin

Berlin is a city that demands to be photographed – and that’s just what Thorsten Klapsch has done for the last 25 years. Uncube magazine have published an interview with Klapsch alongside a gallery of his brilliant images, discussing the process of documenting the city during a period of unique change.

“The division of Berlin has left strong marks on the cityscape,” Klapsch explains; “the socialist thinking behind Alexanderplatz and its vicinity is still clearly visible. The post-war drive towards new and modern types of housing has also left formative buildings in both former East and West: such as the Stalinist buildings in Karl-Marx-Allee and those in the Hansaviertel in the Tiergarten.”

For more photography from the city, check out our gallery of Ciarán Fahey’s photographs of Blub, an abandoned swimming pool complex in West Berlin.

Would you live in a 3D-printed house? Are you tired of copycat High Lines? Share your thoughts in the comments below