Fifth in a series on cities

Prickly social critic James Howard Kunstler once said “suburbs are the embodiment of existential evil.” Critics regularly condemn them as wastelands of cookie-cutter construction, social conformity, anomie, and racial segregation—and yet that’s where 55 percent of Americans live.

A New York moment:

On Monday night almost 200 people packed out an upper room of W83 Ministry Center, the Upper West Side building where Redeemer Presbyterian Church meets, to talk about housing. It’s a hot topic in one of the most expensive places to live in the country and where homelessness is at the highest levels since the Great Depression.

Fourth in a series on changing cities

On a clear morning in mid-February, a giant boom and a billowing cloud brought a dramatic turn in one of Colombia’s most infamous storylines. Engineers in the northern city of Medellín triggered 180 detonators and demolished the six-story building that drug-lord Pablo Escobar once called home. 

It’s Friday night as usual for a group of Jewish college students at 14 Aigburth Road. Outside, the sun has set on a quiet residential street. Inside, candles flicker in one corner of a spacious dining room. A dozen folding tables, graced with white tablecloths patterned with swirling silver, signal a feast to come.

Around the tables, skirt-clad girls chat while taking turns coddling two tiny, 4-month-old twins in what they call “baby tag.” In an adjoining study separated by lattice wood dividers, Rabbi Mendy Rivkin leads a dozen young men in reciting a ritual prayer.

Third in a series on changing cities

New York City’s metropolitan area became the world’s first megacity in the 1930s, when its population passed the 10 million mark. By 2015 New York City had fallen to No. 9 in a rapidly urbanizing world with 30 megacities. By 2018 there were 33 such cities, and forecasters anticipate 15 more megacities by 2035—perhaps six within the next decade. A World Bank report of a decade ago was right to pronounce urban growth “one of the most important challenges of the 21st century.”