# The highest density urban living in history: WCK



## Mastodon Goard (Dec 1, 2005)

THE WALLED CITY OF KOWLOON

















































Here is an interesting link that provides insane density facts about the Walled City of Kowloon:

http://www.ritklara.com/emerging/coexisting.html

Other goodies:
http://www.twenty4.co.uk/on-line/iss...project02/KWC/

CHECK THIS OUT!
an actual clip of the Kowloon Walled City, from the film Bloodsport:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=KEo6ogAnoZ8&search=kowloon


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## Mastodon Goard (Dec 1, 2005)

The most dense human habitation in world history. 

Kowloon Walled City[/SIZE]


Hak Nam, City of Darkness, the old Walled City of Kowloon was finally demolished ten years ago, in 1993, and to the end it retained its seedy magnificence. Rearing up abruptly in the heart of urban Hong Kong, 10, 12 and in some places as many as 14 storeys high, there was no mistaking it: an area 200 metres by 100 metres of solid building, home to some 35,000 people, not the largest, perhaps, but certainly one of the densest urban slums in the world. It was also, arguably, the closest thing to a truly self-regulating, self-sufficient, self-determining modern city that has ever been built.

The City in its final form went back barely 20 years. In origin, however, Kowloon City was much the oldest part of Hong Kong, and one of the few areas in the vicinity populated when the British first arrived in 1841 to claim Hong Kong Island and the southern-most tip of the Kowloon Peninsula for their own. It was a proper Chinese town, laid out with painstaking attention to eternal principles. The Chinese believed that a town should face south and overlook water with hills and mountains protecting its rear, and in these terms the City was very happily placed, with the great Lion Rock just to the north of it and Kowloon Bay immediately to the south.

What the geomantic sages could not control were the infringements of the barbarians. When the British sought to expand their hold on Hong Kong in 1898, with a 99-year lease covering the whole of Kowloon Peninsula and all the nearby islands, most of Kowloon City was subsumed under the new jurisdiction. Under the terms of the lease, however, it was agreed that the small, walled magistrates? fort to the north of the town would remain Chinese territory until the new colonial administration had been properly established and all the details of land ownership, held within the fort, had been transferred.





The situation was never resolved, and for the next 90 years of British rule the City remained an anomaly: within British domain, yet outside British control. The Chinese officials left for good in 1899, but whenever the colonial authorities tried to impose their will, the remaining residents threatened to turn the attempt into a diplomatic incident. And so it remained until the Second World War, when the invading Japanese delivered the first body blow, tearing down the huge granite walls and using them to build Kai Tak Airport in the shallows of nearby Kowloon Bay. The former harmony was destroyed: the creation of the airport drove away the Yin spirit provided by the water and the City was abandoned.

The City may have effectively ceased to exist, but the area?s status as a diplomatic black hole was not forgotten, and in the chaos of the War?s aftermath it proved the perfect place of asylum for many of the hundred thousands of refugees pouring south to escape famine, civil war and political persecution as the Communists gained control in China. Surrounded now only by walls of political inhibition, the City became the place where they could get their breath back; where they could live as Chinese among other Chinese, untaxed, uncounted and untormented by governments of any kind. 

And so, the Walled City became that rarest of things, a working model of an anarchist society. Inevitably, it bred all the vices. Crime flourished and the Triads made the place their stronghold, operating brothels and opium ?divans? and gambling dens. Undoubtedly, these few (and it always was a small proportion) kept the majority of residents in a state of fear and subjection, which is why for many years outsiders trying to penetrate were given the coldest of shoulders.

But for most, the main priority was survival and their needs were little different from anyone else?s: a life without interference with water, light, food and space. Of these water was the most indispensable and in the early years the only way to get it was to go down. And so that?s what they did, sinking some 70 wells in and around the City, to a depth of some 300 feet. Electric pumps shot the water up to tanks on the rooftops from where it descended via an ad hoc forest of narrow pipes and connections to the homes of subscribers. Only in the last 20 years were Government stand-pipes installed around the City to provide safe drinking water.

To run the pumps and to light up the City?s many alleys required electricity and initially this challenge was tackled in a similarly robust fashion: it was stolen from the mains, often by Hongkong Electric employees who lived within the City boundaries. Only in the late 1970s, after a serious fire (much the most terrifying hazard in the City), were the authorities allowed in with their meters.

Thus was the substructure of urban life roughly but workably banged into shape. And out of all the chaos and apparent lack of real organisation, a sort of society began to flourish. Soon, there were factories of every description, small shops and even schools and kindergartens, some of them run by organisations such as the Salvation Army. Medical and dental care were no problem, as many of the residents were doctors and dentists with Chinese qualifications and years of experience, but lacking the expensive licences required to practice in the rest of the Colony. They set up their clinics on the edges of the City and charged their patients a fraction of what they would pay elsewhere. 

For the moments of relief from toil, there were many restaurants on the City?s fringes and embedded deep in its heart were a temple and a ?yamen?, relics of the City?s distant past. And so life went on. Every afternoon the alleys were alive with the throb of hidden machinery and the clacking of mahjong tiles, while up on the roof, in cages not much smaller than some of the City?s homes, cooed hundreds of racing pigeons, joined there by children playing after school. 

And here, in this richness and diversity, lies what was truly fascinating about the City. For all its physical shortcomings, and there were many, its residents had succeeded in creating a true community - and, ironically, one that was to flourish in the City?s final years, after the authorities had moved in to arrange the clearance and the Triads had been forced to move out. Photographed by Greg Girard and Ian Lambot during the City?s last years, this exhibition offers a glimpse of that unique community and of the extraordinary architecture that had evolved over the years to support it.

For more information about Kowloon Walled City, look out for Greg and Ian?s book, City of Darkness, available from specialist architectural bookshops or via our website at watermarkpublications. com.










Aerial photo (c. 1973):









Demolition of the Walled City begins in 1993:









A "Street" inside the Walled City:









Family-run Noodle factory in the Walled City:









Cookin' Heroin in the Walled City:









!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 






























The rooftop playground:









In the Peking Convention of 1898, which leased Hong Kong to Britain for 99 years, the Walled City was excluded, the Chinese governing the area on condition they would not interfere with troops stationed to defend Hong Kong. Britain quickly rescinded the unofficial agreement, announcing in December 1899 that KWC would become "part and parcel of Her Majesty's Colony of Hong Kong". After Britain attacked the Walled City the same year, only to find it deserted, they failed to demonstrate control over the city, leaving it pretty much alone, their inaction adding to confusion over the city's rule.

China, likewise, never recognized Britain's claim to the Walled City, though for the years between the turn of the century and World War II the city was more of a tourist attraction than a residential settlement. Two events led to a resurgence of people back into KWC: Japan surrendering in WWII (previously having demolished most of the city to lay airport runways during their brief occupation), and the formation of the Republic of China in 1949. The refugee influx, due mostly to the latter, was steady, reaching about 10,000 residents in 1970. In this time the British government attempted to evacuate the squatters after an unsuccessful proposal to turn the jurisdiction of KWC into a "Garden of Remembrance of Anglo-Chinese trusteeship" (which the Chinese flatly rejected). The evacuations lead to riots as the expelled tried to return to the city, causing the British to drop the evictions to prevent further deterioration of Anglo-Chinese relations. From this moment on (ca. 1949) the British Government adopted a "hands-off" policy towards the Walled City.

What happened in the following years gave KWC its reputation as "a cesspool of iniquity, with heroin divans, brothels and everything unsavory." The blossoming of the city under no apparent rule continued with occasional, unsuccessful raids and evacuations over the years. A murder trial in 1959 illustrates the confusion over governing the city: a British court ruled that since the murder had been committed within the Walled City it was out of their jurisdiction, but looking at the Peking Convention they realized the city under Chinese jurisdiction was temporary. Fifty years later and still nobody is certain who's rule KWC falls under!

In the "bad" years of the 1950s and '60s much of the power lay in the hands of the Triads: a republican secret society against Imperial Manchu rule, when formed in the late 19th century, turning to more "dubious activities as a way of raising funds" (drugs, prostitution and gambling). Much of their control dissipated when police made over 3,000 raids and 2,500 arrests in the 1973 and '74, another turning point.

The 1970s saw improved Anglo-Chinese relations and a continuation of the "high-rise" boom of the previous decade. This decade, and the following, also saw KWC at its peak: the population increasing up to 350,000 in 1983, with less crime than the rest of Hong Kong. With the improved relations between Britain and China the announcement, in 1987, of the Walled City's demise is not surprising. Neither government saw it as an asset or as something they wanted to take responsibility for, but both agreed that it had to come down. The city existed outside the realm of the understandable or the comprehendible; a grotesque, dense mass that exhibited a certain beauty at the same time. It depended on the political tension of two countries to exist, yet, ironically, was an un-political entity. By cleaning the slate both governments wanted to start afresh, but hopefully material, like this web page and the resources mentioned in the bibliography, will keep the city alive.


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## djm19 (Jan 3, 2005)

Looks like a dump filled to the brim with garbage.


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## Mastodon Goard (Dec 1, 2005)

*MORE INFO ON THE WALLED CITY OF KOWLOON*









At that time, it had 50,000 inhabitants on 0.026 km squared, and therefore a very high population density of 1,900,000 / km?. It was allegedly the most densely populated spot on Earth. 





































Kowloon Walled City was not and never had been a city. It covered not much more than 25,000 square yards and, although it had been surrounded by a crenellated wall, the defences had been demolished by British prisoners-of-war under Japanese command and used as hardcore for an airport runway extension. 

It had originally been established in the 18th century as a far-flung outpost of the Chinese empire. After the British gained control of Hong Kong and, later, Kowloon at the end of the Opium and Arrow wars in the early 1840s, the Chinese imperial government insisted on maintaining a local presence so the British turned a blind eye towards Kowloon Walled City. When the New Territories were ceded to the British, Kowloon Walled City became, in effect, cut off and ruled and possessed by neither - or both - countries. 

Few Hong Kong policemen patrolled it and no government official collected taxes. The power supply was illegally tapped from the main grid and the water supply from the mains. Kowloon Walled City was in effect a minute city state all on its own, arguably the smallest ever to have existed.


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## mdiederi (Jun 15, 2006)

Spectacular squalor. :runaway:


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## Cunning Linguist (Apr 27, 2006)

> At that time, it had 50,000 inhabitants on 0.026 km squared, and therefore a very high population density of 1,900,000 / km?. It was allegedly the most densely populated spot on Earth.


I think you may have your figures wrong, 0.026 km^2 is 26 square metres, which is obviously not the case. A more likely figure is 0.26 km^2, giving a population density of around 190,000/km^2, which is more likely.


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## Spooky873 (Mar 2, 2005)

LES in Manhattan had 5 times the population of Walled City in Kowloon.


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## Spooky873 (Mar 2, 2005)

*Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan.*

The bulge of Manhattan now known as the Lower East Side was originally farm land. When it began to be developed for residences late in the 18th century, no law governed street layout. (That was not to happen until 1811.) If separate grids, with streets going in different directions, were conjoined, so be it.

Each block was further divided into individual lots, typically 25 feet wide by 100 feet deep, that were then sold or leased to owners or developers who generally erected single-family row houses on them.

They were fine, almost generous, so long as the City was of medium size and its residents lived in row houses. But soon enough a swift influx of population required not single-family houses but multiple dwellings. Now, on the lot which had been designed for a single row houses, a building inhabited by 20 or more families rose five, even six, stories high.

*Overcrowding On The Lower East Side*
The tenement at 97 Orchard Street was competed in 1864, the same year in which Sherman marched through Georgia, Tolstoy began "War and Peace," Pasteur invented what came to be called pasteurization, and a heroine named Octavia Hill took on the long battle to reform the conditions of the tenements of London.

In New York City, a similar reform enterprise began. It was led by an association of reformers who established an activist Council of Hygiene and Public Health. *The Council took a survey, whose results shook the City. Among its findings was that 495,592 people - possibly more than half the entire population of the City - lived in tenements. On the Lower East Side, the numbers worked out to 240,000 people to the square mile. *The Council reported:

"It is only because this rate of packing is somewhat diminished by intervening warehouses, factories, private dwellings, and other classes of buildings that the entire tenement-house population is not devastated by the domestic pestilences and infectious epidemics that arise from overcrowding and uncleanness...Such concentration and packing of a population has probably never been equaled in any city as may be found in particular localities in New York."


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## Spooky873 (Mar 2, 2005)

http://www.thirteen.org/tenement/eagle.html


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## Itarilde (Nov 18, 2005)

Cunning Linguist said:


> I think you may have your figures wrong, 0.026 km^2 is 26 square metres, which is obviously not the case. A more likely figure is 0.26 km^2, giving a population density of around 190,000/km^2, which is more likely.


Well...
1 km^2 - 1000*1000 m^2 id est 1million m^2...


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## Skybean (Jun 16, 2004)

Itarilde said:


> Well...
> 1 km^2 - 1000*1000 m^2 id est 1million m^2...


Yes this is correct, you cannot just multiply by 1000.


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## Spooky873 (Mar 2, 2005)




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## Spooky873 (Mar 2, 2005)

WCK is one of, not _the_ densest.


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## Travis007 (Jul 19, 2004)

I'm actually 5 minutes from the Kowloon Walled City park and the site of the former KWC (Kowloon City). I'm glad to see the KWC gone today but it is still a marvel to reminisce how people used to live in such density and conditions.


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## MexAmericanMoose (Nov 19, 2005)

thats fukin incredible!!


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## I-275westcoastfl (Feb 15, 2005)

What a mess good thing its gone i wouldnt be caught living in that mess ever.


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## mhays (Sep 12, 2002)

I'm sure it was horrible. But it looks so COOL! I wish I could have visited. Which probably would have required an invisibility cloak since I don't look like an insider.


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## Marathoner (Oct 1, 2005)

Spooky873 said:


> WCK is one of, not _the_ densest.


1,900,000 per square km not the denest?
I mean permanent lving place.


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## Skybean (Jun 16, 2004)

Also notice that those numbers for the Lower East Side are in *square miles*. If you work it out, that comes down to 191,000 people / km^2, which is ten times less than the density of Kowloon Walled City. 

There are parts of Kowloon that still today would reach density figure close to that of LES.

But for both LES and KWC, you cannot be too sure of the population counts.


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## ChicagoSkyline (Feb 24, 2005)

LOL, this wall city is sicko! :runaway: 
Image one tiny earthquack...everything will be drop like sand :scouserd:


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## ChicagoSkyline (Feb 24, 2005)

BTW, is it me, or it looks like a war zone to me? :runaway:


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## ailiton (Apr 26, 2003)

Spooky873 said:


> LES in Manhattan had 5 times the population of Walled City in Kowloon.


WRONG. 1 Square mile is much bigger than 1 square km. 

LES: 240,000 sq/m2 or 93,750 sq/km2
Mongkok HK (still exist): 400,000 sq/m2 or 160,000 sq/km2
Kowloon Walled City: 1,900,000 sq/km2


NYC's figure simply doesn't come close.


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## ChicagoSkyline (Feb 24, 2005)

ailiton said:


> WRONG. 1 Square mile is much bigger than 1 square km.
> 
> Densest part of HK which still exist has a pop density of 160,000 /km2 or 400,000 /mile2.
> 
> NYC's figure simply doesn't come close.


The mile is way bigger of unit than kilo meter!
I would have to say that HK's density in one particular place like this hell hole city would be denser if you also count rats! :jk:


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## ♣628.finst (Jul 29, 2005)

Marathoner said:


> 1,900,000 per square km not the denest?
> I mean permanent lving place.


it was the densest!

population in most older neighbourhoods in Hong Kong is just around 100,000-300,000 inhabitants per square km. New Towns around 50,000-300,000 inhabitants per square km.


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## Spooky873 (Mar 2, 2005)

ailiton said:


> WRONG. 1 Square mile is much bigger than 1 square km.
> 
> LES: 240,000 sq/m2 or 93,750 sq/km2
> Mongkok HK (still exist): 400,000 sq/m2 or 160,000 sq/km2
> ...





Skybean said:


> Also notice that those numbers for the Lower East Side are in *square miles*. *If you work it out, that comes down to 191,000 people.*


191,000 in a sqkm. - LES


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## Spooky873 (Mar 2, 2005)

ailiton said:


> Kowloon Walled City: 1,900,000 sq/km2


1.9 million in sqkm?

that doesnt make sense.



im sure you mean 190,000.


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## Spooky873 (Mar 2, 2005)

it appears that the LES and KWC had around the same, 190,000 a sqkm.


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## Skybean (Jun 16, 2004)

Sorry, ailiton was correct. LES is indeed 93,000 per sq km. I divided the 400,000 instead of the lower figure -- 240,000 per sq km. 

1.609 km X 1.609 km = 2.5888km sq
Divide 240,000 by 2.5888 = ~93,000 per sq km. 

In any case, places in Kowloon exceed that density today.


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## Spooky873 (Mar 2, 2005)

ohh i see.


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## elkram (Apr 1, 2006)

Wow, fascinating --- I've aged while never hearing about KWC until now, too funny --- what on earth are old yank photos being posted 'ere for? dincha bother reading the intros on KWC's legacy, postah?

Cheers,
Chris


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## Marathoner (Oct 1, 2005)

Spooky873 said:


> 1.9 million in sqkm?
> 
> that doesnt make sense.
> 
> ...


you are right! that doesnt make sense. that's the point. 
that doesnt make sense to make it a miracle. miracle always doesnt make sense. 1.9 million in sqkm is difficult to imagine. 
even as a HKer, i always think it was ridiculous. what the hell could such single structure house 50,000 people? how could they torlerate? but the fact has always fascinated me.


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## RiversideGator (Dec 31, 2005)

It looked like a terrible place to live - a vision of hell. I am sure not many mourned its destruction.


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## Randwicked (Jan 29, 2004)

Cunning Linguist said:


> I think you may have your figures wrong, 0.026 km^2 is 26 square metres, which is obviously not the case. A more likely figure is 0.26 km^2, giving a population density of around 190,000/km^2, which is more likely.


No, you're wrong. A square kilometre is a million square metres. 0.026 x 1,000,000 = 26,000 m (2.6 hectares).


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## Mosaic (Feb 18, 2005)

WCK is unbelievable!!! it makes me sick!.


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## zergling (Jul 5, 2004)

lol SSP had the WCK article posted years ago and had tens of pages of replies. How disappointing it is for SSC to be beaten by SSP by so much...


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## paulmat (Jun 16, 2006)

How the bleedin' hell did they build that?


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## Mastodon Goard (Dec 1, 2005)

Spooky873 said:


> 1.9 million in sqkm?
> 
> that doesnt make sense.
> 
> ...


Nope. 1.9 million/km^2 is the accurate figure. It was even listed in the Guinesss book of world records a few decades back when the WCK existed (hightest population density).


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## Mastodon Goard (Dec 1, 2005)

greggirard


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Rise WCK zombie, RISE!


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## Eric Offereins (Jan 1, 2004)

Must have been an awful place to live in, but at least it was a great setting for the 'Bloodsport' movie.


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## eclipse182 (Mar 2, 2016)

Wow that is crazy, I can't even imagine living in that kind of density. Quite fascinating though.


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## Mastodon Goard (Dec 1, 2005)

implosion of density


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