Althouse: Photos of the Kowloon Walled City.

May 5, 2012

Photos of the Kowloon Walled City.

It's hard to believe this place was real. It's so much like sets from a fascinating dystopian movie.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...: Reading this post from my hotel room in Kowloon, it's hard to believe this city has changed so much in twenty years.; 5/5/12, 1:38 PM
edutcher said...: Incredible.

I've read there are people in Hong Kong harbor who have spent their whole lives on the sampans there.

I always think when I hear somebody talk about poverty in America that we don't know how well we have it here; 5/5/12, 1:57 PM
FleetUSA said...: I believe there is no social safety net in Hong Kong .. Maybe in all of China. You work or you die.

And NYT correspondent Thomas Friedman admires China!; 5/5/12, 2:00 PM
ricpic said...: You work or you die.

And this is bad, how?; 5/5/12, 2:08 PM
pm317 said...: There are places like this still, for real in many parts of the world. You don't know how good you guys here have.; 5/5/12, 2:17 PM
David said...: These are not the worst living and working conditions in China. There are probably 600 million people in China living at this level or worse.

I don't see it as the result of communism. It's more the result of a couple of hundred years of war, anarchy and social breakdown.

Perhaps the American anarchists of the occupy movement would like to go live there for a while.; 5/5/12, 2:26 PM
RMc said...: Wiki sez there were 33,000 people living on 6.5 acres. The entire land surface of our planet (not counting Antarctica) is about 52,093,000 square miles.

So, if the whole world was as crowded as Kowloon Walled City was, there would be about 170 trillion on Earth.

Ans about 169.999 trillion miserably.; 5/5/12, 2:29 PM
Lyle said...: There are some highrises in Kowloon today that are pretty run down. Kowloon Walled city was ridiculous and amazing though.; 5/5/12, 2:32 PM
Anonymous said...: Looks like what CA urban planners want: high density living.

http://www.calwatchdog.com/2012/05/02/darrell-steinberg-wants-you-in-an-ant-farm/; 5/5/12, 2:40 PM
Peter Hoh said...: PatCA, Kowloon Walled City was pretty much free of government planners, regulations, and all that stuff.; 5/5/12, 2:48 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: But...But....just think how small their carbon footprint must be. No nasty commuting from the suburbs to work.

THIS is the future that the progressives envision for us. Everyone crammed into one small space to save Mother Earth from our CO2 emitting selves.; 5/5/12, 4:44 PM
Big Mike said...: This is Madison, after 40 or 50 more years of liberal policies.; 5/5/12, 4:56 PM
bagoh20 said...: That looks like hell, but the most terrifying thing was this:

"The arrangement is typical of traditional Chinese values in which the daughter-in-law looks after her inlaws."

That would be a fate worse than hell.; 5/5/12, 9:54 PM
john marzan said...: Hey, I was just researching about Kowloon Walled City after watching Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express last week.

If you're a tourist backpacker and want to experience the "walled city", you can visit Chungking Mansions at HK. it's kinda similar, but smaller and cleaner.

Here's a documentary of Kowloon Walled city on youtube.

Here it is in the movie Bloodsport by van damme.; 5/5/12, 10:39 PM
Peter Hoh said...: DBQ, suburbs are the result of central planning, land use regulation, and signifiant limits on what private property owners can do with their land.

Suburbs would not exist in their current form without freeways, and freeways would not exist without government confiscation of private property through eminent domain.; 5/5/12, 10:43 PM
john marzan said...: would make a great setting for blade runner sequel.; 5/5/12, 11:01 PM