Red Cross Red Crescent magazine 
Front line city
As cities take on greater importance — as population centres and economic hubs — they have also become front lines in most of today’s conflicts.
As cities take on greater importance — as population centres and economic hubs — they have also become front lines in most of today’s conflicts.
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.
The largely urban conflict in Syria has also had a major impact on cities in neighbouring countries. Lebanon, which hosts some 1.2million Syrians, is dealing with complex confessional fault lines.