Long thin covers and nuclear dimension

We establish finite nuclear dimension for crossed product C*-algebras arising from various classes of possibly non-free topological actions, including arbitrary actions of finitely generated virtually nilpotent groups on finite dimensional spaces, certain amenable actions of hyperbolic groups, and certain allosteric actions of wreath products. We obtain these results by introducing a new notion of dimension for topological dynamical systems, called the long thin covering dimension, which involves a suitable version of Rokhlin-type towers with controlled overlaps for possibly non-free actions.