Cities are where most of the world’s people live, and where many of the most consequential decisions about housing, transit, public space, and climate get made. This archive tracks meaningful progress in urban life — from cleaner air and safer streets to more equitable neighborhoods and smarter infrastructure.
Lagos began around the mid-1400s as Eko, a farmstead settlement founded by the Awori, a Yoruba subgroup who knew the creeks and barrier islands of Lagos Lagoon intimately. From that quiet coastal community grew what is now Africa’s largest city, home to an estimated 17 to 21 million people today.
Timbuktu became a permanent settlement around 1125 C.E., when a Tuareg dry-season camp at the edge of the Sahara finally put down roots. Sitting about 20 kilometers north of the Niger River, it grew into a crossroads for salt, gold, and scholarship. Two centuries before Mansa Mūsā’s famous pilgrimage, its foundation was already quietly being laid.
In 1147 CE, a Russian chronicler jotted down a brief note about two princes meeting at a small outpost called Moscow. Within a decade, a wooden kremlin rose above the Moskva River, fortifying what had been a marshy frontier settlement. That throwaway line marked the moment a future capital first stepped into the written record.
Baghdad was founded on July 30, 762 C.E., when Caliph Al-Mansur broke ground on the western bank of the Tigris and named it the City of Peace. Its famous circular plan was designed by a Zoroastrian and a Jewish scholar. Within a generation, it grew into one of the largest cities on Earth and a crossroads of medieval learning.
Pyu city-states rose along Myanmar’s Irrawaddy River more than two thousand years ago, with walled settlements like Beikthano, Sri Ksetra, and Halin taking shape from around 200 B.C.E. Roman coins and Indian religious art found at these sites show just how far their trade reached. They’re among Southeast Asia’s earliest known cities — and a reminder that urban life in the region grew from its own roots.
Nan Madol rose from a Pohnpei lagoon beginning around the 8th century, when Pacific Islanders started filling a coral reef with stone to build a ceremonial capital. Over time, 92 artificial islets were linked by tidal canals, all supplied by canoe. It stands as a quiet rebuttal to old assumptions about pre-colonial Pacific societies.
