So I've recently read an article on decaying urban zones / shantytowns and came across this thing called Kowloon Walled City that used to be in Hong Kong

 

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City

 

It looked like something right out of Hell, a very weird social anomaly if I ever saw one. Thought I'd share.

Nice find... actually kinda cool. Glad I didn't live there though.

Those pictures were all taken over 2 decades ago and this story comes out all these years later. Amazing tale about what has happened in a place of the world we hear so little about. Thank you CC for sharing.

Here's a documentary film snippet: http://io9.com/5713565/incredible-claustrophobic-footage-from-inside-the-kowloon-walled-city

 

EDIT: It's broken into parts, the links are below the embedded video

Edited March 12, 201412 yr by ccabal86

Believe me when I tell you that it isn't much better now. Yes the apartments are less old, humid and what not, but still the population density is so high in some of these areas (HK, Shanghai, Beijing). The main reason is that the ground prices are so high per m2 that people need to build higher and compacter which results in this. My family lives near the major city of Guangzhou which houses about 13 million people. That's about the population of some European countries stuffed into an area the size of the French island of Corsica. 

What's really fascinating here, is the social and power relations behind the "city" itself. I think this demonstrates quite well that there is simply no such thing as Anarchy, at least not in any sustainable form (the times when shit hits the fan and people start looting is not "sustainable").

 

Government or no, someone will set the rules. Rules that may not be codified in law, but they exist nonetheless.

I see your Kowloon walled city, and I raise it to a Tower of David.