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An urban landscape can bring contradictions front and center. It can be both impressive and disappointing, inspiring and disheartening, both beautiful and ugly. F. Scott Fitzgerald, when describing New York in The Great Gatsby, called the view of the city the "first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world." The visual experience of a city is a singular one, which is why urban photography yields such rich portraits.
That's why last week we asked readers to send us photos inspired by the prompt "urban." As always, we received a diverse and creative collection of photographs, and it was a challenge to pick the ones we featured above. This week's submissions for the Mashable Photo Challenge Series demonstrated not only the masterful eyes of many members of the Mashable community, it also showcased how our readers come from all over the world. We saw photos from cities across the United States, Europe, China and more.