A History of the Kowloon Walled City
The Kowloon Walled City was one of the most unique buildings ever constructed; although it has similarities in the shantytowns that can be found all over the world (most famously in Brazil), it took the form of a skyscraper instead of an urban landscape. Although the City isn’t that obscure as a topic, the geopolitical background that allowed it to exist is lesser known.
Once the densest place on earth, with roughly 45 thousand people living in the footprint of a large urban park (or 6.5 acres of land), the Kowloon Walled City was full of gangs, drugs, and illegal businesses like dog meat restaurants and unlicensed dentists. It wasn’t a great place to live. However, the City was so unique that it eventually became a tourist destination of sorts.
Due to the risk of doing construction without any architectural guidelines, structures like the Walled City are unlikely to be made in today’s modern world. But even though it was destroyed in 1993, the iconic building continues to inspire architects and fiction writers today — for example, Japanese architects recreated it for an arcade in Tokyo.
The Kowloon Walled City gets part of its name from Kowloon, which is a sort of borough of Hong Kong. The Walled City was right next to Kai Tak airport, which has since been decommissioned. Flying into that airport was famously sketchy; it was…
