The Limits of Human Density

Fluid Urbanism in the Limits of Human Density

A Study into Kowloon Walled City, the Lost City of Darkness

Geoff James Eberle

Abstract

Chapter 1: Genesis

Chapter 2: Life

Chapter 3: A Retrospective

Chapter 4: The Start of the End

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Figure 1 - Minor Elevation

Abstract

Hong Kong harboured, up until 1993, a micro city whose unique socio-political situation eventually led to the creation of the densest urban cluster in history. Kowloon Walled City was a labyrinth devoid of road systems, basic sanitations and public spaces.

In 1987 a government survey estimated the population to have reached a density of 1,255,000 people per square kilometre whilst occupying only a 0.026km2 (6.5 acres) of land and in 1992 when Kowloon was de-stroyed there were some estimates of a population of nearly 50,000 inhabitants - Goddard Charles (1993, p 208).

‘It was arguably the closest thing to a truly self-regulating, self-efficient, self-determining modern city that has ever been built’ - Girad and Lam-bot (1993, p. 09). A city which grew up to 14 storeys, occupying every possible bit of land it could scavenge, becoming a solid building com-plex.

The air was described as damp, stale, and saturated in the endless smell of the slimy sewers, the thousands of people without basic sanitation and the sickly sweet smell of the opium dens. Occasionally ceilings would collapse in cascades of water. The hyper deep plan destroyed all human notions of daylight cycles, and broke down all order of bio-rhythmic life.

Yet behind the squalor lay its charm, a richly varied and ever mysterious complex. Spatially it was without any coherent order; every alleyway unique with even the most primary of routes requiring ducking, dodg-ing and avoiding everything from exposed electricity cables, open sew-age lanes and rat colonies. The roof-scape, was an endless tapestry of undulating angles dissipating water without strategy of where it would terminate. Stairs would fork and inadvertently enter surrounding build-ings. Secondary level circulation paths squeezed out what little light 4

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Figure 3 - KWC O

utside perspectiveFigure 2 - Aerial

was available below. Movement through the city was organic, and un-rigged, answering to no recognisable form or grid.

The United Nations have predicted a global population set to reach 9 billion by 2050 with slums expecting to house a third of the people. The tensions between ‘legal’ land developers and slums neighbourhoods will exacerbate, and extremer densities upon illegal self built dwellings will be far more likely and so KWC in many ways provides a window into the future of the informal metropolises. By providing a balanced critique, there is possibility to find a solution to between the conflicting forces which embraces both density and urban informality.

This paper will explore how KWC came to be, survived for so long and later in 1993, why it was destroyed. It will demonstrate what attracted people to the complex, and why they fought against the continual at-tacks of decommission, defeating its negative portrayal propagated even today by the HK governance. At no point will this essay come any-where near a romanticised, rendition of perhaps a very controversial urbanism, but rather extract the defining positive principles in which to reconsider its misconceptions of simply ‘a parasitic urban entity’.

With perhaps the greatest anti-thesis to western urban design theory, the complex as I will elaborate upon, became a non-governed, close knit society who against all odds and intuition flourished as an integral component to Hong Kong’s economic, social and cultural fabric. I will further elaborate how KWC’s destruction was brought about through it’s adopted comprehension from colonial rule, becoming a political manoeuvre rather than an objective urban critique.

To understand Kowloon Walled City, one must know how it came to be, as its manifest is of consequence to a unique cocktail of political, cul-tural, social and historical quirks and is also integral to the arguments of which I put forth.

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Figure 4 - KWC to H

ong Kong

Chapter 1: Genesis

“More than a political anomaly, Kowloon serves as a metaphor for the human mind”.

It’s hard to believe the city in the early 19th century was only a small rural tourist location with spacious gardens and shady trees, which was once considered as a taste of old China - Pullinger (1989, p. 18). In 1843 when the British seized Hong Kong, the Chinese government promptly fortified around territory in attempt to defend against the British threat. In 1847 the Chinese completed a walled garrison of what would later become the site containing KWC designed to accommodate 150 ad-ministrative residents. The wall comprised of six watch towers and four gateways, housing numerous cannons along the parapets.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century the British became increas-ingly more alarmed by gambling around the walled city in the quickly, developing market town, after marauding anti-dynastic rebels took hold in the region. For defence reasons the British sought to expand Hong Kong further into mainland China which was deemed threatened by the “evils of Kowloon city”. This misrepresentation was used to pro-mote a British takeover, in an attempt to halt the “malign influence” and was considered by many accounts, an over-exaggeration. In this way, British slandered the walled city as a way to legitimate the colonial en-terprise - Seth Harter (2000, pg. 94). This portrayal over the century was never forgotten.

The British illegitimately acquired the land and expelled the Chinese officials and troops from the site after a series of military skirmishes – Girad & Lambt (1993, p. 09). Ironically however this served only to ex-acerbate situations, by creating a no-man’s land ripe for squatters and criminal activity. “Where there is nothing, anything is possible”. – Lau-rence Liauw.

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Figure 5 - Early KWC

Figure 6 - hong Kong Extension

In 1899 the convention of Peking was signed which declared a new lease of land for the UK. This territory however did not incorporate the small 6.5 acre walled Chinese military garrison. This garrison was to re-main under Chinese jurisdiction so long as it was to present no immedi-ate threat to Hong Kong. A year later however civil unrest as a result of British occupation, retreated troops back to the garrison, evicting the Chinese stationed troops, exacerbating diplomatic tensions.

Then came the Second World War and when the Japanese took over Hong Kong the fortifications and some of the enclosed buildings were demolished, yet the lands unique lease remained in place. The City re-mained an anomaly as a place of British Domain, but outside of British control.

After the war, the small patch of land took a mass flood of refugees es-caping communism, as the land acted as a political black hole, provid-ing a safe haven from the governance. The Hong Kong elite repeatedly attempted to redevelop the area as a park only to be fought off, after continual protesting by local residents.

The critic of the city transformed from one of diplomatic impunity to a moral polarization of the clean, ordered, colonial residents vs. the an-archic and uncivilized residents of the walled city. The residents where misrepresented as purely Chinese in an attempt to strengthen the gov-erning rule reducing them to components of political rhetoric.

The city challenged the conventional understanding of the enclave as ‘a special relationship between a distinctive group of people and a place’, as the trait in which attracted the refugee waifs was embodied in the territory itself, as freedom from governance.

Post war KWC saw an incredible, mass influx in refugee waifs escaping Chinese communism, attracted by the political void. The enclave had to expand vertically to accommodate the new influx and with no formal policing the city was left to its own devices.

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Figure 7 - Historic evolutions of Figure, G

round, Elevations Diagram

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Chapter 2: life

Territoriality helps maintain the balance between population density and local resources, within the limits imposed by the carrying capacity of the habitat - Wynne Edwards (1962).

The KWC environment was developed predominantly from the bot-tom up whereby the individuals were left to arrange the city as to their capabilities. Derelict land was immediately taken advantage of in a frantic grab for property, followed by public spaces, leaving only the most minimal of public access, whose unconsidered form, was second-ary to the necessities of the individuals. “Spatial Greed has no predict-able form” – Laurence Liauw.

To accommodate the sheer demand for space, house was built upon house, in an endless and uncoordinated growth of unregulated struc-ture. Entire families were forced to live in homes of only 10-20m2 of floor space, yet KWC as David Shane (2005, p. 241) remarked was an informal reflection of HK as both city and sub city, were forced out of horizontal expansion, building vertically in response. Horizontally Kow-loon was limited by its legal exclusion and vertically had to be limited to 14 stories by the adjacent airport to give enough distance for the over-head planes to land. The urban form was therefore a direct response to it’s given parameters of perimeter restraint versus population demand.

KWC had reached a scale at what Rem Koolhaus (1996, pg. 16) coined as the XL; the humanist relationship between exterior and interior based upon an expectation that the exterior will make certain disclosures and revelations of the interior, was broken. The perimeter wall performing as a porous membrane, whereby limited entry points would allow peo-ple to flow through, mitigated by the Triad occupation. Building eleva-tion was forced up against building elevation, distanced by 4ft walk-ways causing severe interiorization of the complex.

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Figure 8 - Street conditions

The city was generated through a multiplicity of errors each com-pounding to form new errors and leaving a chaotic and unarticulated mass. All classical and modern planning rules were ignored in favour of a chaotic density. The City was broken down crudely into three catego-ries; circulation, population and services.

All conventional scales, like street, courtyard, room, street block, dis-solved to a undulating labyrinth of a dense interconnected network structure. A large central void remained untouched called the Yemen, saved for religious practice, community and gambling, acting as the primary socio-fugal space.

The last relic from KWC’s former history remained, the Tin Hau Temple. The Temple was protected from thrown out rubbish of residents by net-ting above transforming itself from open space to enclosed. Occasion-ally parts of rubbish dislodged and dramatic streaks of light would cut through the darkness onto the temples classical Chinese roof. The pres-ervation of such a building represents the people’s attachment to their culture and history even when land was so incredibly scarce.

Philip Geddes (1982, p. 83) stated that the shanty towns of Hong Kong including the Kowloon Walled City were part of the Hong Kong unoffi-cial housing policy, and it’s toleration before the late 1980’s represented the fairly static approach to dealing with uncontrollable migration.

The city was becoming a highly productive, working model of anarchy, and as such became a threat to local rule. The Government officials considered it only as “a cesspool of iniquity”. The City soon took on the name of ‘Hak Nam – The City of Darkness’.

City Inter-Dependence

KWC existence defined Hong Kong as a poly-ideological centre. On the one hand, KWC could have been considered as a reprehensible icon of Chinese occupancy, infiltrating and diluting the emblem of Hong Kong Rule. On the other hand Mathew Hung (2013, p.57) describes the en-

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Figure 9 - Tin Hau Tem

pleFigure 10 - Street Passage

tity as a city which is seen as such to mirror Hong Kong, where some aspects of it confirm through its congruence with the rest of the colony but also disrupt through its rejection of the norms outside the city, also akin to Michael Foucault’s (1986, p.22) definition of heterotopia.

ROOFTOP SLUMS

In this way both cities form a spatial and cultural symbiotic relationship, and to disregard one without the other would be to pervert the true identity of the region. KWC was not a distinct entity, but a part of Hong Kong itself.

In defining the sub-city through cultural isolation, KWC became a criti-cism of Chinese rule, the colonial management was able to strengthen its hold upon the region. The prejudice was adopted by the later Hong Kong government, and caused intensive diplomatic tensions between China and Hong Kong, it was through these tensions, that Hong Kong was unable to destroy KWC until much later.

Morphological attributions

The city lends itself to Winy Mass’s (2006, p. 65) ideas of “light urbanity” where the city operated as a short term metropolis whose ability was far greater than the standard urban situations to reacting and cultivat-ing cultural and functional shifts.

Unstable Institutions blurred their typological definitions through spa-tial and functional re-appropriation. A cafeteria could become a mah-Jong parlour and a toy factory by day, could become an opium den by night. A housing unit could be retrofitted as a noodle factory with no legal, functional or social limitations.

Compact cities as described by Richard Rogers (1999), through their density become polycentric, using derelict land first. Environmentally, they minimize infrastructure and by being well connected encourage walking/cycling as the primary forms of transport.

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Figure 11 - ‘Old Chinese Traditions’’

Figure 12 - Urban and Cultural Integration

KWC’s circulation spaces became synonymous with public spaces, as shops would open their frontages creating complex forms of sociopetal spaces, twisting perceptions of place in an eternally chaotic evolution. Whilst in many ways we from our western context we might consider that space was incredibly claustrophobic, one has to take into account that people form psychological, spatial adaptations that develop into nostalgic connections with the places in which their used too, as dem-onstrated by Walter Firey’s (1947, p.170) studies on ‘Intersystem congru-ence’.

Nan Ellin’s (2013) description of the hypothetical Slash City or integral urbanism as a city that is holistically entwined in every aspect helps describe KWC. Principally integral urbanism is about authenticity, po-rosity, vulnerability, hybridity and connectivity. KWC addressed these requirements by integrating functions like living, working, circulating and playing. It integrated the private and public realms, the centre and the periphery. The plan and the section lost all definition to the mass. Indoor and outdoor space was without formal threshold. Nan’s slash city consider people as a component of nature and so social integration from all different ethnicities, ages, abilities and backgrounds comes to-gether to form a stronger collective, a reflection of the societies within the complex as I will elaborate further upon later.

Henri Lefebvre (1991, p.27) rejects the concept of designed space as inanimate and merely a container of functions but rather space coming into being through social practice. This organic process of Kowloon cre-ates fluid routes, akin to the process of termite mound production, or bio root systems. Architects often only replicate these spaces as statistic products, forgetting them as continual processes.

This gives authenticity to spaces rather than ones at the prescription of an unknown designer. It becomes a wider representation of the people, as it’s a result of the people themselves. It integrates mind, society and infrastructure into one grand organism, straddling the duality of being both larger and smaller than the individual. As the city contorts and re-

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Figure 13 - Circulation vs Open frontages

Figure 14 - Figure, Ground D

iagram

sponds, the individual has a feeling of meaning and significance within the environment. This is human pride in habitat and community, acting as a binding agent to ones sense of dwelling.

These attributes, have the potential to challenge the conventional formal planning we know all too well, as it mirrors unanticipated, un-organized human behaviour, something we aspire too, in our post modern, urban design. The city is not a representation of society but physical manifest of actual social structure becoming the living phe-nomena rather than the image.

Economy

The position the colonial government held, was that the squatters were not invited to Hong Kong and therefore the taxpayers did not have any legal obligation to attend them – Geddes Philip (1982, p.79). This flex-ibility in policy benefitted both parties, as illegal migrants were able to live side by side Hong Kong inhabitants whilst Hong Kong inhabitants received all the benefits of a cheaper working class.

Kowloon Walled City was often betrayed as economically parasitic to Hong Kong yet the relationships between the city and sub city where actually far more symbiotic. Hong Kong would purchase its deregu-lated merchandise for considerably reduced cost allowed for a trading system where cheap labour and materials could be inter-traded by the greater Hong Kong metropolitan. Many industries like fish balls and noodles were principally sourced from the sub-metropolis itself.

Alan Smart (2006, p. 14) commented on the economic miracle of the thousands of inhabitants who were prepared to work at roughly a third of the pay for 12 hours a day. This gave way to a shadow economy fulfill-ing the demands that Hong Kong could not – Seth Harter (2000, p.92).

Industries such as textiles and foods in particular would deliver the best typical economical differential from the outside world. Small shops would generate up to double the income than outside their walls due

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Figure 15 - the Edifice of regulationsFigure 16 - A

local Dentistry

to the intensity of the cluster. Gibson-Graham (2004) described slum neighbourhoods as examples of post-capitalism; exciting, proliferation of projects of economic autonomy and experimentation.

The city’s compactness generated a hybrid between a polycentric and scattered industrial layout where clusters of functional arrangements developed micro-economies. As such underlying zoning took effect where one’s neighbouring businesses could be advantageous to one’s livelihood. Industry and residential sat close together without any clear definition of where one started and the other finished. This created live-work neighbourhoods, allowing for individual independency for small time entrepreneurs, and was a major factor in the extreme lows of un-employment.

The Communities

Counter-intuitively, despite the anarchy, the city was incredibly socially functional as the city responded organically to its necessities, in a uni-lateral hive mentality. Its lack of order denounced the necessities for rigid social structure by defeating its many complex issues through the course of time. Residents according to Jenny Dawson (2013, pg. 8) cre-ated basic rules to deal with matters of survival, like fighting fires, crimi-nal behaviour, water and electricity management.

The sub city, physically forced social proximities, breaking down bar-riers of diversity, leaving situations whereby the rich neighboured the poor. Social confliction was thus reduced as class divisions weren’t spa-tially orientated. Communities would form through certain common nodes that brought people together like the water filling stations or the communal Yemen square as mentioned before. Allan Wicker (1968, pg. 255) showed how smaller groups would have stronger communal pressures, as the peripheries of a group would be more exposed and thus more inclined to participate.

A secondary transient community developed, where populations would flow in and out of Kowloon city, some would settle, others would be

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Figure 17Figure 18 - Fam

ily orientation

displaced, and as stated by Winy Mass (2006, p. 155) the city’s character evolved continually to accommodate the new supply and demands of the people.

The third main community was that of the illegitimate authoritarian group, the triads, who functioned not through spatial proximities but through a networked, socially stratified organization. Members would first be initiated under the ranking, little brother, moving up in the fam-ily and receiving higher responsibilities after earning respect in the or-ganization.

Criminal Activity

The Triads (the local mafia organization) ran and ‘protected’ Kowloon Walled City preventing the intrusion of the HK police. The Triads were described once by Elise Elliot the Urban Counsellor as a “sort of govern-ment within the government”. At every entrance to each narrow street sat a Triad watchman guarding their territory from suspicious individu-als and the police.

Criminal activity was isolated to drug use, prostitution and gambling. Early KWC saw some residents under the persecution of the Triads, be-came virtual slaves to the sex and opium industries. With the abandon-ment of state policing the Triads were able to flourish, yet despite the Triad reputation violence and theft was nearly unheard of. KWC por-trayal as one of intensive criminal activity was discredited Kowloon city district police commander in 1982 as crime rates according to the “were no higher than in the surrounding area”. KWC’s vice could have been considered more as a cultural anthropology, rather than a localized so-cial attribute.

The large majority of people lived decent, socially functional lives. Granted that some inhabitants had run from the law however many residents were previous victims of an oppressive Chinese government. To rebel in Kowloon was not to rebel against governance, but against community, and as such was with greater impact, socially rejected.

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Figure 19 - Police inspectionsFigure 20 - A

n Addicts Recovery

There is clear evidence for the sub-sects of the city in times of needs pulled together for common interest for things likes water or electric-ity, and in an anarchic complex with little means for money this is in-conceivable without group co-operation and interest. Predicated from their own ancestral villages were 77 wells dotted sporadically around the complex provided the inhabitants for water, some of up to 300ft deep. Electric pumps shot water up to great tanks above the roofs from which it descended through a complex matrix of pipes through the cir-culation routes at ceiling level to those who could afford them. Amaz-ingly though, mains water and sewer water never got mixed up.

Fans would be installed in rows along the corridors doing the best to recycle the stale air. Walkways constructed by bamboo shoots would bridge upper levels between buildings relieving pedestrian flow from the primary circulation paths below.

Kowloon never managed to conceive of any real solution for waste management though, leaving most residents either discarded inor-ganic rubbish outside the windows or just dumped them on the roofs. The recycling was reminiscent of a similar slum, Sabiline in Cairo, where residents could earn a living sifting through heaps of rubbish recycling valuable plastics and metals.

Institutions

Around the mid 80’s small Schools and nurseries slowly started to de-velop run by the Salvation Army, serving primarily the poorest of par-ents would be allowed to send their children to earn an education. Oth-er children would either be left to their own devises throughout the day time, or help with the parents in the factories.

Jackie Pullinger, a philanthropic westerner set up a small shelter from 1973 - 1993 in which she utilised spiritual healing through Christianity to help cure many of the cities addicts. Most of the addicts have their origins within the Triad, mafia organization with around 80% being her-oin addicts - Jackie Pullinger (1989, pg . 62)

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Figure 21- Water distribution

Doctor’s surgeries and dental care practises became a vital constitu-ent to the working life of Kowloon, many of the practitioners receiving training passed down through generations, or who had been trained with years of experience in mainland China but didn’t have the certifi-cate needed to work in the colony. This created healthcare institutions with a fraction of the costs to that of regular health care industries, and whilst they might not have been as quite as reliable as Hong Kong’s doctors, it worked towards diminishing social class healthcare.

Restaurants provided a healthy meal form a long day of work for both inhabitants and visitors, displaying barrels of live foods such as frogs, fish and snails as proof of their ‘freshness’. Boundaries were flexible be-tween institutions and streets and would often spill out onto the main circulation paths, adding to the sense of vibrancy.

In the evenings the alleyways came alive with the clack of mah-jong tiles, dice and card games as residents would flourish onto the streets competing with neighbours and passers-by. Light gambling became a prominent source of social interaction divided by the genders as men would play with men and woman with women, common to Chinese culture.

Individual Identity

Without external walls, the inhabitants invested identity into their inte-rior, a forced introversion of expression. This is common of many other slums today like the Tower of David in Venezuela or Sabiline in Cairo where and individuals expression is less expressed with society but with visitors of the homes themselves. This is evidence that despite the harshness of environment people will feel the need to adapt their envi-ronment, to a personality befitting of their needs.

Those who dwelled at the edge of the complex found ingenious (and technically illegal) methods to expand their housing, through the use of cage structures, and eventually became tolerated throughout Hong Kong as part of the urban fabric – Rufina Wu (2009, p.67), demonstrat-

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Figure 22 - kindegartenFigure 23 - Religiuos G

atherings

ing, both KWC cultural and technical influence.

Since the end of world war two, there’s been a shift from the registered macro identity (continental, national, regional) to the micro identity, the individual. People are less concerned with what they apart off and more interested in whom they associate themselves - Winy Mass (2012, pg. 89). The phenomenon is of consequence from a range of factors such as democracy, consumerism, and technology. As such architec-ture has responded with generating housing which attempts to break down its mass to its constituent dwellings, expressing the people be-hind the structure.

Kowloon’s border homes unconsciously took this ethos to the next level, through self-building. In addition, their initial identity is open to redesign, refinement and even upgrading. Some homes took on highly decorated interiors, and whilst many of the homes where of the out-come of purely functional requirements, it is evident that pride in ones dwelling when financially possible was undertaken.

Undeniably the character of the city, whilst with all its down falls of sanitation and darkness offered a provoking experience, and it came to be a city whose residents defended with pride. It brings into question western architectures priority of human comfort over sense of place.

Many westerners live life undernourished of any real poignant sense of place. It has been stolen from us by our sensibilities, and whilst we trav-el occasionally to empathize with others, we fear for our personal com-forts. “More comfort raises the issue that we are becoming dependent on it” – Winy mass (2006, p. 103) and without meaningful character and without conviction of a place we find it difficult to invest any real hu-man passion into our environment.

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Figure 24 - KWc Rooftop neighbourhoods

Chapter 3: A Retrospective

A semi-anarchic flexibility of space could be appropriated to cities where conventional systems are over or under burdened with extremes of density change. Similar initiatives have made great progress into im-proving urban quality in Detroit called “the live make neighbourhood” and “urban gorilla farming”, where low density neighbourhoods insti-gated a re-adaptation of unoccupied structures and land into new en-terprises, freeing the potential for economic growth (“a new vision for...” 2013). Such a diversity in spatial and functional administration, brings about specific type induced proficiencies that become specific to re-gions. This would be working to what many European cultural philoso-phers are heralding the future of interdependency between cities or districts, rather than regions attempting to solve all their issues on their own – Doctors van Leeuwen (1999).

Could we detach ourselves as designers to leave the system into the hands of some people, of which who would re-appropriate the crude and their fore economically viable structure into means which suited themselves? Is the future of slums embraced rather than considered as an issue? Can we embrace Poly-ideological cities, who form hyper-productive networks of interdependency? Are living standards synon-ymous with life fulfilment quality? Are universal urban organizations representatives of people or an idea of a global society?

Kowloon Walled City demonstrated a distinctly autonomous urban situation in the extremes of human density, whereby through its un-orchestrated design, human comfort was sacrificed. The parameters in which urban design must adhere to our principally the basics of hu-man comfort, and any notions of extreme density are irrelevant if this is not prioritised, however we must recognise people through necessity regardless of comfort will strive for survival and profit. We must antici-pate such social moves and embrace them before, they get out of con-trol. Considering such social manoeuvres as ‘a problem’ as in the case of 32

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Figure 25 - Urban Integration

Kowloon was a failure. Despite, the hardships of the people, communi-ties and order was perhaps more present than in many of our European cities we know today.

The question in which Kowloon ultimately challenges our perception lays in the value war becomes community vs physical environmental quality. This is the choice of the people rather than the architect, and so the diversity of place and lifestyle represents the wants and needs of society beyond the capabilities of a generic manifesto.

As demonstrated, enclaves of ideological contestation do not neces-sarily have to exclude societies, as the barriers between societies can in-fact be mutually beneficial as in the case of KWC and Hong Kong.

The process of anarchic design is important for it has the ability to quickly achieve socially, economically, culturally and environmentally sustainable neighbourhoods, which develop and improve at far greater speeds independently than top down designs. If infrastructure is intel-ligently, implemented beforehand, anarchic design has the potential to radically challenge the conventional role of the architect in the future of urban planning.

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Figure 26 - Rooftop view

Chapter 4: The Start of the End

“It’s like back home in the villages of China, a harmonious state of anarchy” - former KWC resident (1987).

In the final years when proper policing took over and allowed for the safe intrusion of outsiders the city was starting to be considered in a new light, as a tourist hot spot – Lambot & Girad (1993, p. 09). The en-vironment had finally started to become safe, and this brought about a new money flow into the community

Given it’s transformations through the work of people like the salvation army, Jackie Pullinger and the HK Police the city was transitioning to a more welcoming place of intense, historically preserved, culture and entertainment.

“I have loved this city, with all its darkness, filth and crime. I have seen it transformed by the light of Christ and that light has spilled out beyond the city and across the world” - Jackie Pullinger

Despite KWC’s progress on the January of 1987, the city without warn-ing was declared for demolition under the pretence of protecting its in-habitant’s health and safety. Many believed that Hong Kong was not in-terested in a socially symbolic confliction, as this hindered its mandate in the global struggle for an ‘ideal state’. The transformation of Hong Kong is in many ways is stereo-typical of post-colonial governance, cul-turally repressive tendencies trying to secure itself in the global market by modelling western development - Ananya Roy (2013).

KWC’s monumental shock value was its own rhetoric for its destruction. The Sublime was denounced by outsiders in favour of the picturesque. KWC was entwined with its surroundings, culturally, socially, spatially and economically, yet the government’s propaganda portrayed its im-age to one of isolation – Mathew Hung (2013, p. 01).36

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Figure 27 - Police tacticsFigure 28 - Residents resistance

Narrow mindlessness was the undoing of KWC and not, it’ s density. Rather than embracing the qualities or the cluster, the radical approach of destruction in 1993 in order to create a better image of Hong Kong as a whole, and so a key and distinct, local character and culture was swept under the carpet as if an embarrassment. The culture switched from being representative of the many, to the perverted ideal of the few.

Seth Harter (2000, pg. 95) explains how the diplomatic status of the city is unmistakably the product of a historical disagreement between China and Britain. The moral status however is depicted as the product of culture, seen here as timeless natural and unilateral. Thus the con-version of the city’s dominate trait from diplomatic oddity to cultural monstrosity aids in the task of denying it’s interdependence form the rest of Hong Kong.

The city was replaced with an ironic, diplomatically symbolic, visitor centre. This may have only been possible in a totalitarian government such as China as the destruction was highly refuted by the inhabitants of Kowloon. Tens of thousands of people were forced eviction from their homes and business, many of whom had been born and grown in Kowloon without the skills to work in Hong Kong. The people ab-stracted from their context were forced into an involuntary transition, premised in their favour, yet in reality a misconception, hiding a wider political agenda.

As a form of culture technology, the government decided to mass re-house the squatters all over Hong Kong, many to high rise towers, a way of bringing about a western city, securing Hong Kong’s image as an economic and political powerhouse. Winy Mass (2012, pg. 22) re-marked on how other than offering western living standards, these structures do little to improve life in Asia, they don’t lend to urban re-newal or innovation, nor do they encourage differentiation, flexibility or individual ideas.

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Figure 29 - KWC in D

estructionFigure 30 - Post KW

C Site

Despite the HK government offering over 3.5 billion dollars in compen-sation to the residents, many resisted and were forcibly evicted in 1991.

Had the government overcome their preconceptions inherited from the British and considered its potential as a tourist location, the com-plex might have continued its re-adaptation of function to a location of greater urban intrigue. Commuters might have continued to flour-ish in even greater numbers improving the micro economy of the city and ultimately improving its quality of hygiene and health. KWC had made great strides, but despite this, a tiny anarchic complex in a vast and otherwise control orientated state would one day always have had to concede defeat.

Kowloon Walled city was a victim of misrepresentation, as an isolated urban saboteur, of which tens of thousands suffered from outsiders with an inability to escape adopted preconceptions. It’s legacy calls for an objective and critical approach with how we analyse economically impoverished neighbourhoods, reinforcing the question of whether to embrace destroy them as distinctive characters of the future cities.

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Figure 31 - KWC

Figure 32 - Replacment H

omes

List of Bibliographic References

Girad, G. G., Lambot, I. L. (1993). City of Darkness – Life in Kowloon Walled City :Watermark Publishers

Gibson-Graham J.K.G-G. (2004). surples Possibilities: Post-Development and Comunity Economies:

Rufina, W.R. Canham, S.C. (2009). Portraits from above - Hong Kongs In-formal Rooftop Comunities. Hong Kong: Pepperoni Books

Mass, W. M., (2006). Farmax – Excursions on Density. (3rd Edition) :Eelco van Welie, Nai Publishers, Rotterdam

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Pullinger, J. P. (1989). Crack in The Wall – life & Death in Kowloon Walled City. Great Britain: Hodder and Stoughton

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List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Girad, G. G., Lambot, I. L. (1993). City of Darkness – Life in Kow-loon Walled City :Watermark Publishers



Figure 4. Hung, M.H. (2013). Kowloon Walled City: Heterotopia in a space of disappearance




Figure 8. Girad, G. G., Lambot, I. L. (1993). City of Darkness – Life in Kow-

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loon Walled City :Watermark Publishers


Figure 10. Girad, G. G., Lambot, I. L. (1993). City of Darkness – Life in Kowloon Walled City :Watermark Publishers

Figure 11. Girad, G. G., Lambot, I. L. (1993). City of Darkness – Life in Kowloon Walled City :Watermark PublishersFigure 12 Girad, G. G., Lambot, I. L. (1993). City of Darkness – Life in Kow-loon Walled City :Watermark Publishers













Figure 25. Goddard, C.G. (1993). The Clearance - In City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City








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Supporting Information

Hemis Number: Up604232

Total Word Count: 5452

Bibliographic Reference List: Harvard APA style 6th Edition

Territoriality helps maintain the balance between population density and local resources, within the limits imposed by the carrying capacity of the habitat - Wynne Edwards (1962).

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