Detroit’s Salt Mine: A City Beneath The City
This gigantic mine, 1,160 feet beneath the surface, spreads out under Detroit over more than 1,400 acres with 50 miles of roads. A huge sea covering the region evaporated more than 400 million years ago, forming salt deposits that were gradually buried by glacial activity.

The Beautiful Hidden Logic Of Cities
Driving around your city, you’re probably somewhat aware of Avenues and Boulevards and Streets and Roads and so on. However, it’s hard to get an overall view of how all these road designations knit together. By coloring them, we can suddenly see a new, stunning view of what we normally take for granted.

“3,000 Miles”, A Short Doc About Life In New York Through Voice Mails
On July 5th, 2016, Sean Wang moved across the country to work and live in New York City for one year. This is a personal documentary of his year, chronicled by voicemails left by his mom.

Nashville Wants To Be The Next Austin, But Tennessee Won’t Make It Easy
The city has sought to position itself as more affordable but no less hip than Austin, Denver, or Portland, Ore. Business interests in the state capital have held off a slew of anti-LGBT bills that seemed poised to become law.

Studio Precht Designs A Fingerprint-Shaped Park For Physical Distancing
Austria-based studio Precht — previously known as Penda — has unveiled the design for a lush green park envisioned for physical distancing and short-term solitude. Dubbed Parc de la Distance, the open air space has been shaped in the form of a fingerprint, evoking human touch.

Photographer Captures Moped Delivery Drivers In Hanoi
Jon Enoch first visited Vietnam 15 years ago and was completely astounded by the motorbike and moped culture in the area. These vehicles are the workhorse of the city as they allow small businesses to operate.

Growing Up Travelling: The Inside World Of Irish Traveller Children
When American photographer Jamie Johnson visited Ireland for the first time in 2014; she immediately felt connected to the Irish travelers living there. She spent the next five years going back to Galway, Limerick, Cork and Tipperary, taking portraits of the communities, particularly the children.

Urban Geography: Why We Live Where We Do
Rich Americans live in the suburbs; Rich Europeans live downtown. Why do cities on the two continents have different structures?

The Suburbs Are Coming To A City Near You
In some ways, living in a dense urban area has become much more pleasant for certain types of people — namely the affluent and those who prize proximity to the action above all else. Is a city still a city if urban living is a luxury good?

100 Years Ago In Photos: A Look Back At 1919
A century ago, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, as much of the world was still recovering from the devastation of World War I. Rebuilding was just beginning, refugees were returning home, orphans were being cared for, and a global influenza outbreak was being battled.

Adam Gibson Captures Tasmania’s Modern Architecture in Gorgeous, Moody Hues
Based in Tasmania, Australian photographer Adam Gibson documents the stunning work of the island’s architecture scene in his unique style that often straddles the intriguing border between architectural and lifestyle photography.

How Letizia Battaglia Used Photography In A War Against The Mafia
Ever since she became the first woman photographer working for a daily Italian newspaper, Letizia Battaglia has used her camera as a tool for the people and a weapon against those who sought to destroy them.

Inside The Pampered And Personalized World of DC’s VIP Diners
The big restaurant lie: Everyone is treated the same. For a select group of dining heavies around town, a whole other world of special perks and suck-uppery awaits.

Moonless Moonlit Nights
Commuters are generally too tired to notice the quickly passing scenery or the complicated reflections layered up on the short, fast train ride home from Tokyo to Yokohama. But photographer Yasunori Murayama pays attention. He captures multiple stories in single exposures.

The Epic Rise And Hard Fall Of New York’s Taxi King
The man known as the Taxi King arrived at his 2014 holiday party in a $384,000 Ferrari, wearing a custom Italian suit. Five years later, that man, Evgeny A. Freidman, stood in a mostly empty courtroom in Albany, N.Y., as a judge sentenced him to probation for tax fraud.

The Fall Of New York And The Urban Crisis Of Affluence
I have never seen what is going on now: the systematic, wholesale transformation of New York into a reserve of the obscenely wealthy and the barely here—a place increasingly devoid of the idiosyncrasy, the complexity, the opportunity, and the roiling excitement that make a city great.

Mining For Gold In The World’s Highest Permanent Human Settlement
High up in the Andes, La Rinconada is a place where people go to seek whatever fortune they can muster in the gold mines nestled there. Photographer James Whitlow Delano describes it as a place with no running water or sewage system, populated by about 30,000 to 50,000 inhabitants.

How Air Pollution Is Doing More Than Killing Us
Emerging studies show that air pollution is linked to impaired judgement, mental health problems, poorer performance in school and most worryingly perhaps, higher levels of crime. These findings are all the more alarming, given that more than half of the world’s population now live in urban environments.

The “Smart City” Makes Infrastructure And Surveillance Indistinguishable
The “smart city” is not an actually existing entity. It’s a misleading euphemism for a corporately controlled urban future. Urban command centers are built primarily for police, not planners, let alone the public.

Photos Of Leningrad (St Petersburg) In The Early 1960s
St Petersburg is situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. It is Russia’s second-largest city after Moscow. These fascinating color photos captured street scenes of Leningrad (St Petersburg) in 1961.

Beautiful, Dangerous, Damaged: Photographers’ Top Ocean Shots
Octopus-hunting freedivers, mounds of shark fins, and a close encounter with a leopard seal are among the judges’ selections for Oceanographic Magazine’s ocean photography awards.