Chongqing is, according to some measures, the largest city in the world. Yet it is also little known outside China, deep in the country's interior on the banks of the Yangtze River, around 2,300 kilometres from the sea. With its almost two and half ...

La Rinconada is the highest, permanently inhabited settlement in the world at over 5,000 metres above sea level. It has grown out of an informal settlement for miners working in nearby gold mines into a small city of around 30,000 people and continues to...

During the desperate drive for economic development under Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, vast swathes of the Danube Delta - the huge wetlands straddling the border between Romania and Ukraine where the Danube spills into the Black Sea - were ...

The Kangerluarsuk Fjord cuts deep into the wild mountains of southern Greenland. Bare rock walls rise steeply out of the water. On the eastern side a striking mountain range towers above the bay, its peaks looking like the teeth of a comb. Yet Ole ...

One year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in December 2024, Syria is at a fragile turning point. Levels of violence have declined in many parts of the country, but the humanitarian crisis remains immense. Millions of Syrians still depend on ...

In the misty, isolated, and impenetrable mountains of southern Tanzania lies one of the world's richest ecosystems and the refuge of the kipunji monkey, one of the last primates discovered on earth. But this biodiversity sanctuary, untouched by mass ...

Murad Vartanian dyes his moustache black. It's a sign of resistance; and the 70 year old mayor of Havresk needs this resistance. His village is dying. Only 79 families remain in this remote village in northern Iraq. The Armenians originally fled here ...

Recently in Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkiye, I watched an old man walking back and forth with ropes in a dark cavern; a man whose feet were tired and whose body was stretched like twisted ropes; who bent a little as he walked. A man who could not get ...

Launched in 2007, the Great Green Wall initiative is seen as the most ambitious environmental project ever undertaken in Africa. Initially envisioned as an 8000 km long wall of forest running through the Sahel region of Africa, from Senegal in the ...

In the second half of the twentieth century, some 150,000 people of colour were forcibly removed from their homes in Cape Town and rehoused on the Cape Flats, a barren, windswept plain on the outskirts of the city. This act tore apart communities, ...

I began "The Quiet Rise" at a moment when Germany still felt new to me, new enough that I was holding onto the idea that this country would finally give me the freedom, safety and dignity I had been denied for most of my life. I had left Iran after ...

For thousands of years, oases have sustained human life in the world's deserts. Globally, an estimated 150 million people rely on the water, arable land and access to trade networks they provide. Now, in the face of an ever harsher climate, many of these...

The capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo could be the most populous city in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050. This presents a number of massive challenges - from housing, transport and provision of food to fuel supply, sanitation and governance. The...

Dhaka is a massive, low-lying urban expanse that is home to over 10 million people and sits at the confluence of the Meghna and Padma Rivers. The central districts straddle the banks of the Buriganga, one of the city's main transport corridors and ...

At 4,150 metres above sea level El Alto is the highest major city in the world, situated adjacent to La Paz, Bolivia's capital. Growing from a mid-sized town of 95,000 in 1980 to over one million today, El Alto is coming into its own. With a burgeoning ...

In 2019, Indonesia's former President Joko Widodo announced the relocation of the national capital Jakarta, plagued by overpopulation and constant flooding, to a new planned city in the jungle of Borneo. This new urban creation was named Nusantara. The ...