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Find cities and capitals and understand how settlements develop.
Oman · Cities & capitals · Map guides
Muscat lies on the Gulf of Oman, with the Hajar Mountains forming its rugged backdrop. Oman’s capital occupies a coastal setting where rocky hills, bays and flatter land…
Cities & capitals · Explainers
Urban geography is the branch of human geography that studies towns and cities as places, patterns and networks. It asks how housing, workplaces, transport and public spaces are…
Canberra · Cities & capitals · Explainers
Why is Canberra the capital of Australia?Canberra became Australia’s capital through a political compromise and a deliberate planning process. Rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne favored a new federal…
Lisbon · Borders · Place guides
Lisbon is often pictured as a city of hills beside a vast expanse of water. Both impressions are useful, but neither tells the whole story. The water beside…
Kathmandu · Cities & capitals · Map guides
Kathmandu is a Himalayan capital, but the streets at its center do not sit on a snowy summit. The city occupies a much gentler surface inside a mountain-ringed…
Hanoi · Borders · Place guides
Hanoi’s geography is easier to understand when three things stay separate: the city center, the wider municipality and the Red River landscape. Each describes a different scale, and…
Nairobi · Cities & capitals · Map guides
Nairobi challenges two common assumptions about African cities: that a place near the Equator must be uniformly hot, and that a large capital must be physically separate from…
Addis Ababa · Cities & capitals · Place guides
Addis Ababa is easier to understand when you look beyond its position as a capital. It is a highland city with an uneven surface, streams that connect it…
Mexico City · Cities & capitals · Map guides
Mexico City’s geography combines three stories that are easy to confuse: a highland basin, a former lake landscape and a metropolis extending beyond the capital’s administrative boundary. Separating…
Quito · Cities & capitals · Place guides
Where is Quito?Quito is Ecuador's capital in the Andes of northwestern South America. Its historic center lies just south of the Equator, on the eastern side of the…
Cities & capitals · Map guides
A photograph of Cape Town often shows a mountain rising behind a waterfront. That view is memorable, but it leaves out much of the city’s geography: the low…
Amman · Cities & capitals · Map guides
Amman is easier to understand as a hill-and-valley city than as a single dot beside a population number. Jordan’s capital occupies an inland upland setting, while the wider…