Kowloon Walled City: The City Inside of a City
Have you ever played Shenmue 2 on XBOX¹? Well, if you haven’t, it’s fine because it’s not super important. IF YOU HAVE PLAYED IT, well, you are familiar with the Kowloon Walled City, or at least the idea of it. The Kowloon Walled City is a zone, inside of the special administrative area known as Hong Kong. Let’s go ahead and establish together that we’re committed to referring to the Kowloon Walled City as “KWC”, from this point forth. Well, KWC was essentially a tiny city that was only 7 acres in size. That’s an average city block. Now, you may be thinking, “Well, that’s pretty small, but what of it?” I’ll tell you right now! Well, inside of this 7-acre city, there was a population of up to 50,000 people². That’s wild. Now, to put this into perspective let me use the played out, but also effective, comparison to New York City. In NYC, the population density is 27,000 people per square mile. In Kowloon Walled City, the population density, according to a government survey in 1987, was 3,250,000 million people per square mile. MILLION. So doing the math, that makes Kowloon Walled City 120x more dense in population than NYC. I want you to think about this the next time you mention that NYC is too crowded and that there are too many people everywhere. Seriously, 120x the most-densely populated city in the United States. Let’s talk about how this place came to be.
Origins
In the context of modern times, the place started out as a Chinese military fort. After the British gained control of bits of Hong Kong in the 19th century, the place was beefed up. The British ended up gaining control of it anyway in the early 20th century. After WWII, the British were challenged by the Chinese over control of KWC. Eventually, the British got sick of dealing with this whole thing and decided to just let KWC do whatever it wanted with itself.
So this is where it actually gets wild, population wise. The people living in KWC when the British decided to back off were a couple thousand squatters. After this, the population just skyrocketed. You had people that moved in from Mainland China, as well as people who simply could not afford to survive in the actual city of Hong Kong. After 1950, the whole thing just blew up.
1950s-1993
So, we’ve already established that nobody really took responsibility for KWC, so you can imagine what it was like. Triads had taken over, and if you don’t know what a triad is, let’s just cover it really quick. They’re like… the Mafia, but in China. That was easy. Anyway, they took over and pretty much ran KWC as a center for their organized crime. This is where the popular misconception came from that everyone who lived in KWC was a criminal. As we head into the 1970s, and the population exceeded 30,000 people, the crime did, in fact, peak. The Hong Kong police, the only government entity that took an interest in the city, conducted a few raids on KWC and pretty much came up with exactly what they expected to find; lots of drugs and evidence of organized crime. They continued to apply pressure and eventually were able to control crime. While this was all going on, the city was literally being built up. The city had been a small, but densely packed, group of shoddy buildings for a while, but as the 1950s and 60s came, the city began to build on top of these buildings. No professional engineers were involved, no architects. The people built this city up themselves, no matter how unsafe. The picture above is of KWC’s buildings in 1975, and this was pretty much as high as they would get. But you can see how wild this really is. The citizens living inside of this city inside of a city built up this community because it was their home, and not all was bad. KWC was relatively safe by the mid-1980s, but nonetheless, it was on its way to extinction.
Politicians from both the Chinese and British eventually decided that they could not abide by the city any longer, not due to its crime rate³, but rather due to its health risks. The city at this point was a shanty town built on top of another shanty town. The pipes leaked all over people, with dirty and possibly, diseased water. Rats were everywhere. There was the constant threat of a fire that could wipe out the community as one almost did in the 1950s. The place wasn’t a place where people were openly smoking opium and engaging in crimes anymore, but it was a place that eventually would have to come down. Besides, the place had always been dangerous to the Kai Tak Airport located very near to it. The city of Hong Kong had become a place where the sight of KWC was now an eyesore, and it did not matter that people lived inside of it; the government just wanted it gone. In 1993, the demolition began and was completed in 1995. All the tens of thousands of residents were displaced, their homes were no more. KWC was no more. A park was built on the former site of KWC, and fittingly, it was named after KWC.
The Good
The community was more than just a hotbed for crime during its existence, it was a home. It was a place where people lived, and cooked, and loved, and just existed. People went to work, got paid, and supported their families just like a regular community. There were *unlicensed* dentists, there were bodegas⁴, and there were restaurants. Sure, the sanitary conditions weren’t great, but there was life all over. Photographers Greg Girard and Ian Lambot famously ventured in and out of KWC during the 80s, and they photographed everyday life in KWC beautifully.
The community also served as a symbol of empowerment for the largely impoverished population of KWC. KWC was something they could call their own, something that they could control, minus during the whole triad phase. People in KWC had control of their own lives and had a special sense of community that I’m not sure will ever be duplicated. Most inhabitants of KWC were law-abiding citizens and simply wanted to live a life that was fair, honorable, and worth living. The community was so dense that you were constantly seeing people, there was always something to do. KWC holds a place in the heart of any urbanist, or really to anybody who has ever enjoyed the grungy authenticity that only a city like the Kowloon Walled City could provide.
Impact and Lessons Learned
The city has been featured in video games, movies⁵, and countless other works in the media. There’s even a video arcade in Japan now that’s modeled after KWC called the Kawasaki Warehouse. That’s quite the impact, and I can’t imagine that there is another place on Earth that could provide the inspiration that KWC did. Hey, maybe there won’t ever be another city like the Kowloon Walled City. In fact, I’m pretty certain that there won’t be another. That’s a bummer, but it did teach us something. The lessons that can be learned from studying Kowloon Walled City are innumerable, but I suppose that the most important thing was the unique triumph of human innovation in building a city, albeit small, without government help. The citizens may rely heavily on the government, but don’t forget to count on yourself and your community. Long Live Kowloon Walled City. #LLKWC
P.S. If you’re really interested in pictures of KWC and the stories of the people who lived in KWC, you should read Greg Girard’s City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City.
Footnotes:
- The Dreamcast version wasn’t released in the U.S. *sigh*
- This was the population estimate before the demolition of the city began in 1993. Also, this is the high end of estimates.
- The crime rate was way down at this point.
- We’ll call corner-stores “bodegas” here because yes.
- KWC is super featured in Blade Runner as one of the main inspirations for the dystopian setting of the movie.