The climate is temperate with warm summers and cold winters. It remains the leading Warsaw landmark. Marszalkowska, running north-south across the city centre is Warsaw's other famous shopping street. Residential apartment blocks exist in downtown Warsaw but are much more noticeable away from the city centre. While the old town was reconstructed to replicate what had existed before 1939 most of the city is built in the modern unimaginative post-war style.
Housing is mainly tower block apartments around the city centre.
In the few parts of the city that escaped total wartime destruction less dense pre-war type housing exists, for example in the popular east bank area known as Saska Kepa. While the city expanded outwards in the 1950s through to 1970s in the 1990s a major wave of city centre reconstruction has taken place with new hotel, office and condominium blocks being erected on cleared city centre sites. One problem that constantly arises in such redevelopment is the unearthing of unexploded second world war ammunition. Another major feature of 1990s life in the city is that fast growing car ownership generates frequent traffic jams along Warsaw's still underdeveloped trunk routes and arteries. One problem is that there are few bridges over the Vistula but the city hopes soon to erect a major road crossing, the Swietokrzyska bridge, in place of the existing but inadequate Syrena bridge.