I just spent 10 minutes looking at those pictures. I thought it might show up here. Fascinating.

imapirate: Batman would have cleaned that place up.

Somebody did. They knocked it down some time ago.

I remember flying over that when visiting HK. Dangerously close to the old airport.

Anyone have a link to pics after they raised it?

I have a silver and black smoking jacket that was made in Kowloon.

It makes me look like an opium hustling crime lord when I wear it.

I was a building inspector in San Francisco's Chinatown for a while. If the bribes offered had been accepted it would look like this. As it was we had a hell of a time convincing down hill building owners not to excavate rooms under their uphill neighbor's buildings. Yes, I know that they're not using the space but its very bad for foundations to dig under them.

parkthebus: She must have known that I was tired from all the flying.

They are a friendly people.

parkthebus: I went to Kowloon once. I flew MSP-LAX-NRT-HKG and took a train and bus. It wasn't a few minutes before a nice lady asked me if I wanted a massage. She must have known that I was tired from all the flying.

Nobody gives a crap about your airport code travels, hipster.

Canadian photographer Greg Girard and Ian Lambot spent five years getting to know the residents and taking pictures of the densely populated buildings

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon -Walled-City.html#ixzz1u3bUG1fA

Has a kind of Republican look to it. No irritating building regulators or codes to worry about.

Greatly disliked this place in Guild Wars... Minimap only showed the top layer.

Fascinating!

TFA is lame, for the fantastic subject matter. Good to see a few pics I'd never seen before though.

Bloodsport (video here) did a scene going through Kowloon's alleyways. Despite Bloodsport's interpretation, it was hardly a criminal underworld. Well the Triad "crime leagues" did operate with impunity from about 1950 up until 1973, but they were mainly gambling, prostitution, and opium dens. They didn't bother outsiders. I'm guessing that stealing or killing customers was frowned upon, probably a business, just an illicit one in the eyes of the Hong Kong govt which was believed to lack jurisdiction here (so technically not illegal, there must first be law for a thing to be illegal).

They cleaned the crime out in 1973-1974, but it was still used and loved for its low rent and absence of laws or regulations. They made their own little hell, and it was pretty damn cool.

That place was total concrete anarchy. Buildings build irregularly, to 10-14 stories. Not only was there no sense of building code, there was little sense of land ownership, and someone just started building buildings BETWEEN buildings, by right of Go-Fark-Yourself.

It built up over decades. By the end, there was little or no daylight because the only way between buildings would be VERY narrow alleyways, which had 10+ stories until it reached the sky, or there may be more stuff built above that with no path to sky at all. The side, there was no view laterally from the walkways out. The exterior walls were packed and the exterior wall may be a block away.

The place was deteriorating pretty badly and you gotta wonder what a building collapse would do when would simply lean on its attached neighbor.

It served as an inspiration to Ghost in the Shell, Batman Begins, numerous movies and video games, the indirect influences are countless.

Any brave (and most likely drunk) Navy guy that took the ferry across from Hong Kong wandered into that place. Quite an adventure.

Considering the conditions, I'm a little surprised the place didn't go up in flames for all those years.

I stayed in a hotel in one of the tall buildings off Nathan Road about 25 years ago. It was odd to see all sorts of businesses arranged around the 21st floor of a tower - dry goods trading, a hotel, an auto repair shop (big-ass service elevator), hair dressers and so on. The building was built around a central courtyard so light could come in down the centre. But the courtyard was filled with garbage to about 3 floors up and the inside face of the building was covered in garbage hanging down from pipes and railings.

Went there years back, and it really was a giant McOpium den and Best Brothel all rolled into one with some of the best food in the world being served a door or two down the corridor. They've tried to clean it up, but I hear the good places still exist. I liked it there. It was brilliantly welcoming and the kind of place that makes middle class white Americans fearful of their children going anywhere outside of the US.

palladiate: Weaver95: couple/few more years and that's what new york, philadelphia and Los Angeles are gonna end up looking like...

Well, if we succeed in stripping laws down to the level they enjoyed, maybe.

Regulations only succeed in holding back capitalism.

Shoulda known this guy was a photographer!

And, I despised this map on BlOps.

This place was the libertarian paradise - little government, no regulations, no protection for workers, food safety, workplace safety, building codes, fire hazards, little law enforcement.

Truly a marvel, gone before its time.

Wrenegade: Considering the conditions, I'm a little surprised the place didn't go up in flames for all those years.

Considering the conditions, I can't help wondering what's wrong with Smitty that he'd opt for the tag. Maybe cool to look at, but I imagine you wouldn't think so after living there for a month.

RevCarter: I have a silver and black smoking jacket that was made in Kowloon.

It makes me look like an opium hustling crime lord when I wear it.

Oh c'mon, you can't tell us that without posting a pc.

Mazzic518: OK LMAO Even the dudes cats are Chinese



I was just thinking that same thing

It is the stacks from "Ready Player One"


Its a pretty good read and if you get the audio version, it is read by Wil Wheaton, which is fun.

Bet it smelled as nice as a Cambodian market in November.

War, war never changes.....

baorao: Canadian photographer Greg Girard and Ian Lambot spent five years getting to know the residents and taking pictures of the densely populated buildings

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon -Walled-City.html#ixzz1u3bUG1fA

Yeah, that same scene came to mind for me. I need to re-watch that movie.

Coelacanth: One day we'll probably have drtfter colonies (homemade space stations built from scrap) in space that will look like that.

I don't see it happening in space, the problem is if you don't have your shiat together, there's 101 ways to die. So much work and expense is required to make a reliable living space, the cost of a remedial sense of planning isn't that significant.

On water, though...

In the late 90's there was a guy proposing "Freedom Ship"- an absurdly huge cruise ship-city, primarily to circumvent taxes. It might set up in international waters off the US coast and offer computer programming services or whatever. But that would still be centrally planned, because someone is still in charge, with money to lose from poor planning.

Well, "The Raft" in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash was like that, thousands of boats and rafts tied together as an anarchic makeshift "city".

There ARE somewhat anarchic waterway-squatting communities in some places, but they usually don't get really bad like that. Just tend to eat up the waterfront until the city sees enough of a problem to drive them off.

You'd think people might get together and just strap boats and floating junk into a "Waterworld" community in international waters, but seas are ROUGH at times. In readily they'd get ripped to shreds and sunk for sure, many times per year. It'd take spectacular engineering to make that work, jury-rigged crap is doomed. Aside from the basic issue of needing close (and cheap) proximity to a parent economy to provide services to keep going. There's few resources out there to own and nothing to do.

Gleeman: palladiate: Weaver95: couple/few more years and that's what new york, philadelphia and Los Angeles are gonna end up looking like...

Well, if we succeed in stripping laws down to the level they enjoyed, maybe.

Regulations only succeed in holding back capitalism.

"You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others," said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of the committee. "Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?"

Mr. Greenspan conceded: "Yes, I've found a flaw. I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I've been very distressed by that fact."

//keep farkin that chicken

Everything is new to somebody, but this has been on Fark and Reddit and other websites countless times.

Pointy Tail of Satan: Has a kind of Republican look to it. No irritating building regulators or codes to worry about.

Every political philosophy class should study this. No reaching stretch of logic needed- it was a pure example of anarchy. Like I say, it had associations with criminal Triads for a long time, and it was primarily just "victimless crime", but after 1974 the Triads got rubbed out and it was a benign anarchy.

Sadly Kowloon was really not all that well studied or documented. Most of the people kept to themselves so we don't know much about daily life and the political goings-on there. Presumably there were people who had what they saw as "rules" and would beat you up or break your shiat for not pleasing them, but I really don't know. And it was all demolished. There seems to be no evidence of its existence except a few dozen photos, a 40 min German documentary, and a few movie scenes.

This is poor documentation of even the structures. I mean, no blueprints exist. We don't know how many actual buildings or floors were there except from what the exterior shots, and interior shots don't show much at all. We don't know about what kind of walkways they came up with in terms of number, spacing, interconnectedness, width, etc, and that would have been a fascinating example to city planners, those who make construction codes, sociologists and all sorts of thinkers.

Even an example of what NOT to do is of great value when it is this unique and irreproduceable. Nope. Whatever was done, was never documented properly, and that information lost forever.