Today’s growing cities are proving to be efficient incubators for infectious disease. How should cities, humanitarian organizations and local communities avoid the next urban pandemic?

Built on marshlands between a prison and one of the thousands of creeks that make up the Niger delta, the Prison Waterfront neighbourhood is one of many shanty towns to grow up on the outskirts of Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

With 18 different religious denominations all held together in fragile harmony, many argue that Lebanon is the most religiously diverse society in the Middle East. Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city, is also incredibly diverse. And it has long been the scene of recurrent outbursts of armed violence between the marginalized neighbourhoods of Bab el-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen.

How a digital mapping project in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania helps local communities take on urban risk, street by street.

Using an online map they helped developed with local residents, Tanzania Red Cross National Society volunteers offer a tour of the risks and assets of Kigogo, a neighbourhood in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

As cities take on greater importance — as population centres and economic hubs — they have also become front lines in most of today’s conflicts.

Working together to support stateless Shan people in the urban outskirts of Chiang Mai, Thailand.

In many growing cities, migrant communities face multiple levels of marginalization, lack key services and live in neglected, sometimes uncharted neighbourhoods. In the so-called villas miserias of Buenos Aires, the Argentine Red Cross builds the foundations for urban resilience.