As part of the first generation of the Fulbright - National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship, author Michael Waldrep spent a year in Mexico City, North America's largest metropolitan area. There, he investigated the roots and contemporary status of the urban form of that city's sprawl. The project, La Ciudad Actual, or The Contemporary City, published here, is an effort in photography, video, mapping and writing to catalog a city in flux, and to describe some of the processes there that can be seen throughout rapidly urbanising cities throughout the world.

Michael Waldrep is a documentary artist and researcher focused on cities. A Los Angeles native, he holds degrees in Film Studies and City Planning from UC Berkeley and MIT.