QUESTION Duplicate all root level pages into new directory

[shawn_a]

you cannot have

site.com
site.com/city1/about
site.com/city2/about

unless you use a custom plugin to map those routes to a unique slug filename

Either way the page names must be unique.

you could also use some fancy rewrite rules to
point
/city1/about to page city1_about

there has been some discussion of this solution on the forum.