Across Dhaka, São Paulo, Chongqing, and dozens of other cities, a global photo essay has surfaced images that document not dystopia but reality — the consequence of urbanization outpacing the human capacity to plan for it. With 2.5 billion more people projected to enter metropolitan life by 2050, the world stands at a threshold where the city, humanity's greatest invention for collective flourishing, risks becoming its most consequential failure. The question these images quietly ask is an ancient one: do we build places for people, or do we simply build?