Refugees poured in to take advantage of Chinese protection, and 2,000 squatters occupied the Walled City by 1947.

A city that offered a glimpse into the infinite horizons, structural possibilities—and inherent amorality—of the digital realm.We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the world’s hidden wonders. Prostitutes—including children—solicited in the darkness, leading clients away to backroom brothels. Nov 4, 2000. Many would argue not. By Pamela Owen. It was the beginning of the City of Darkness.A system of self-government gradually emerged. Conditions were often appalling, yet productivity—and profit—remarkable. May 3, 1999. kowloon walled city in the 1999 When the kowloon walled park was open and in the 20 century every thing was broken down to open the new park. It had taken some six decades, but at last Kowloon was transformed into the “place of popular resort” envisaged by Sir William Peel, the Governor of Hong Kong in 1934: six-and-a half acres of ornate bamboo pavilions, pretty water features, and vibrant greenery.This is the story of the rise and fall of a slum.
Photo: SCMPKowloon Walled City in the 1970s with the squatter village in front. Photo: SCMPThe Lung Tsun Stone Bridge, used as a landing pier. May 2, 2014 - Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City was the densest place on the planet before it was torn down 20 years ago.

One of the most densely populated areas on earth until its destruction in the early 1990s.

Maintaining an aging offshore platform is no easy task. It was torn down in 1993, and a park called Kowloon Walled City Park was built in 1994. His work includes an undeniable nod to Hong Kong architecture & Kowloon Walled City.DeviantArt's duster132 shares a dystopian, sci-fi vision of the future. Published: …
Gangways and rusting metal ladders let him move quickly from building to building, before he dropped back down into the darkness. With no requirement for planning permission, structures were thrown up with amazing speed. A solitary building still stood at the center of Kowloon, the one structure to have survived throughout its whole turbulent history—the office of the Mandarin. Hak Nam—the City of Darkness.In 1843, the Chinese began to build a fort at the very tip of the Kowloon Peninsula, with an office for the Mandarin (the government official) and a barracks for 150 soldiers, surrounded by a wall that was 700 feet long and 400 feet wide.

News of the disturbances spread across China, and the plight of the “residents” of Kowloon became a cause célèbre. A walled neighborhood called the Narrows in the 2005 film "Batman Begins" was based on Kowloon Walled City. Increasingly, residents were physically sealed off from the outside world. At Kwong Ming Street—known as “Electric Station”—wooden stalls sold cheap drugs. He saw the Walled City, that accident of urban birth, as a crude, subconscious schematic of the future, a blueprint for coders and hackers, the architects of the web, to follow. Is there any greater significance to its story than that? In his 1996 novel So the wrecking ball may not only have been destroying a notorious slum. The man poised to throw his handgranaten, is holding an early model without the pull string.

In 1987 the Chinese government exercised its authority to announce an evacuation of all residents of the Walled City of Kowloon and the future demolition of the city. No one wanted to find themselves outside the borders—those on the wrong side of the line risked losing the protection of the Chinese government. Kowloon’s extralegal status made it the perfect place for the manufacture, sale and use of drugs such as opium and heroin. But often the only option for the postman was to climb. One of the most densely populated areas on earth until it's destruction in the early 1990s. In April 1994, demolition of the taxless, unregulated, autonomous capitalist enclave known as the Walled City of Kowloon was completed, ending nine decades of an unparalleled experiment in utter statelessness. From a temporary refugee camp, Kowloon now began to evolve into something more permanent. As modern high-rises grew up in Hong Kong, the builders of Kowloon copied what they saw, erecting tower blocks of their own.

Kowloon Walled City was built without regulations. It was only just a park.

For six months, the Housing Department kept Kowloon under surveillance to gather evidence of population numbers. On average, residents received around $380,000 for their individual flats.

they left the south wall standing.

And everywhere there were bodies lying in the gloom.

Pioneers from Elsässisches (Festungs-) Pionier-Bataillon Nr.19 in the business of digging a trench and lobbing handgrenades at the enemy. In 1980, the city had about 35,000 people on about 20,000 m² of land, making it one of the most densely populated places on earth. Over the course of the next year, the ruins began their rapid conversion into a landscaped park, modeled on the famous 17th-century Jiangnan gardens built by the Qing Dynasty.The paths running through these new gardens were named after the streets and buildings of the demolished slum. The result was a city outside the law: There was no tax, no regulation of businesses, no health or planning systems, no police presence.