Map Room: The Unconventional City

The modern city has been a place of perpetual reinvention—its true diversity often leaving vast urban areas unmarked on most maps. Mega-cities give birth to cities within themselves, like the Roppongi Hills complex inside Tokyo. Temporary cities appear, built on makeshift infrastructures. England's Glastonbury Festival has an entirely portable, "pop-up" economy, while Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp (the world's largest) has its own mobile judicial system. These alterna-cities reveal new insights into our capability for social innovation. And, until now, they have remained all but invisible.

—Hannah Oppenheimer

What Makes a City?

Urban areas typically provide centralized systems of housing, transportation and sanitation, while widespread commerce and development offer hope of economic gain. These highly condensed habitats also play host to migrants from the countryside and abroad, leading to booming cultural diversity. Unconventional cities, like those below, have reworked these common characteristics of the megalopolis in a variety of ways.