Kydlaw 4 days ago

I am adding a blog post, shared on HN a couple months ago, that show an architectural cross section of the city.

https://cohost.org/belarius/post/6677850-architectural-cross

(I am not the author of the blog, nor the original poster, but I just want to share the link because I found this incredibly cool)

  • MisterTea 4 days ago

    That drawing is from a Japanese book on the subject. I bought it a while ago and although expensive, gave a really good glimpse into life in Kowloon. edit: should add a link to said book :https://www.amazon.com/Kowloon-large-illustrated-ISBN-400008...

    • gainda 4 days ago

      I got this a while back & I think its worth it if you're interested in the subject. The book itself is large!

    • Loughla 3 days ago

      Is there that but in English?

  • CapmCrackaWaka 4 days ago

    Wow, coolest thing I’ve seen while doom scrolling this week. I wonder how accurate that is. It must be an especially dense cross section, because it doesn’t leave much room for hallways or other non living space.

    Also was hoping to see more of the structural elements… that drawing really makes it feel like the entire thing is made of cardboard, hopes and dreams.

    • kibwen 4 days ago

      > that drawing really makes it feel like the entire thing is made of cardboard, hopes and dreams.

      In the same way that corrugation gives strength to cardboard, it's possible that the city could have been so dense that it may have been relatively resistant to collapsing.

  • maeln 4 days ago

    Very very sad about cohost closing btw. It was really the only "post twitter acquisition" social network that spoke to me. It felt very late 2000' in the best ways.

    • dingnuts 4 days ago

      well, they "hate the software industry" so it can't be too surprising that they ran out of money. If you're allergic to revenue you can only last as long as the charity lasts.

      I understand why people are unhappy with the tech industry and industry more generally but until the revolutionaries accept that their ventures have to create enough value to self sustain they will continue to be defeated by traditional companies

crabl 4 days ago

I feel like Kowloon is a decent metaphor for software design at most typical large SaaS companies: small changes accreted over time that lead to an impenetrable, wandering structure that only the residents (developers) truly understand.

  • thefourthchime 4 days ago

    “We build our computers the way we build our cities — over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.”

    ― Ellen Ullman, Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology

  • jazzyjackson 4 days ago

    Nicholas Negroponte's The Architecture Machine goes deep into analogizing software and housing along the dimension of "improvised / iterated on by the users" to "waterfall designed by committee"

    (free with archive account, fascinating book, dedicated to "the first machine that can appreciate the gesture" https://archive.org/details/architecturemach00negr/page/n15/...)

  • seanw265 4 days ago

    It's a fascinating comparison—I've seen this happen at companies too. Makes you wonder if imposing something akin to building codes for software development could prevent this kind of sprawling complexity.

    • yungporko 4 days ago

      i've never seen coding standards properly enforced on any large project, nobody has time to read through and scrutinize 30 files of code every time somebody creates a new feature when everybody has their own work to be doing too. at my last job we had mandatory code reviews and some days half of the entire day was just doing that. it didn't long before reading turned into skimming and skimming just turned into clicking approve.

      • seanw265 4 days ago

        I was thinking less about self-imposed code reviews and more about regulatory frameworks—principles borrowed from architecture and construction, like mandated documentation, reviews, and inspections.

        There's some precedent for this: software in medical devices face strict regulations after incidents like Therac-25.

        While most software might not carry the same life-or-death risks, data breaches are increasing in frequency and impact. We should at least be thinking about how we can improve our processes as an industry.

        • sho_hn 3 days ago

          > I was thinking less about self-imposed code reviews and more about regulatory frameworks—principles borrowed from architecture and construction, like mandated documentation, reviews, and inspections.

          This exists in automotive, cf. ASPICE. And even more extensively in aviation.

          And no, it doesn't help fight sprawl much sadly.

          The HN crowd is mostly web and mobile and unaware how broad the software field is, even though software in safety-critical applications of course predates both.

        • bobthepanda 3 days ago

          given that it takes medical devices billions of dollars in testing to get to market this is a great way to just crush technology entirely. and even so the FDA is recognizing the error of some of its ways and lowering the barriers to entry for things like hearing aids.

      • Groxx 4 days ago

        Sadly I have to agree. It has to be mechanically enforced or it doesn't actually last, even with good intentions. (Or a BDFL, but those have scaling limits and Life™ stuff)

        Which is a shame because I'm pretty convinced that slowing down and having time to do those reviews is net-good in the (not-very-)long run. Much of the space (and bugs) in even a very well run large project are from accumulating gaps until nobody knows how things truly work - it takes time to eliminate them and end up in a simpler, smaller, more sustainable state.

    • rrr_oh_man 4 days ago

      Business moves faster than clean software architecture.

      If there was 'code', arguably, nothing would be built in the first place.

      • DoughnutHole 4 days ago

        Other industries innovate despite having to follow codes and industry standards. They just innovate slower.

        Engineering standards are built on piles of corpses. We’re lucky that most of the growth of our industry has been in non-life-critical areas.

        But regulation and standards are coming eventually - shoddy code will just have to kill a few thousand people first.

        • CamperBob2 4 days ago

          The problem isn't that we fail to apply the same rules for software development in safety-critical and non-safety-critical contexts. The problem is that we do apply the same software in both contexts.

          Gatekeeping the entire industry isn't the answer unless you want to cripple it... but if someone wanted to issue regulations along the lines of "Don't steer your nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a Windows app," I wouldn't object to that.

          • rrr_oh_man 3 days ago

            Better Windows 95 than JavaScript

      • InDubioProRubio 3 days ago

        A ton of businesses also die or crater in slow-mo after they have loaded up on tech debt and grown. Its less likely in pure software, as the exponential curve outruns the need for exponential devs, but it happens..

    • CamperBob2 4 days ago

      Yes, it certainly would have prevented a lot of things, including the creation of the OS and software you used to suggest it.

  • duxup 4 days ago

    I feel like like that recently. Just examining an app that was largely written in isolation and ... I just discovered a new auth endpoint / service that nobody knew we had, and it does not behave logically. It has all sorts of limits that impedes testing / troubleshooting.

    Pain ...

    For the record I am going to eventually direct this app to the "normal" auth service and fix it all up, but man why is it this way???

  • tokioyoyo 4 days ago

    Is this a reference to the “I divorced my wife and this is what it taught me about B2B sales” joke?

  • aaroninsf 4 days ago

    Maybe... that's why I've been fascinated by it. :|

  • eagerpace 4 days ago

    I think this applies to anything that is created over more than a single generation. Basically anything the government touches eventually goes this way too.

jengjenghk 4 days ago

> What remains unclear is why there was such little protest over its demolition

Why would there be? This seems like one of those "people living in squalor is their right!" statements by people on the outside that want to visit a human zoo. I suspect no one that was living there would choose to go back if it still existed. My friends from there certainly don't. They might have a few fond memories but so do war veterans.

  • rkozik1989 4 days ago

    That's actually not true at all. According to interviews a lot of people actually miss it. I believe it was a German documentary that I first heard it in. I'm kind of obsessed with this place and even created a game around the premise of a walled city.

    • Macha 4 days ago

      Certainly I've heard the same from a coworker reporting on her grandmother's perspective (her grandmother lived there in the 60s/70s).

      At the same time, the grandmother did leave when she could, long before the final demolition, despite her later views on that time.

    • Loughla 3 days ago

      Metro but set in Kowloon would be shockingly good to play.

  • brazzy 4 days ago

    Some people actually refused to move out and had to be evicted.

    People form emotional attachment to their home, even if the living conditions are bad.

    • duxup 4 days ago

      Especially if they are older. I'm in a suburban / rural border area and there are lots of older folks who just want to spend their days at home. But the area is changing, people around them are selling and that means change.

      The interesting dynamic is that most have enough land to sell for a very pretty penny and they could build a great place further out, far better than they have now, but rather they value the comfort and familiarity of home, and I get that too.

  • immibis 4 days ago

    There must have been reasons why those people chose to live there. They must have felt it was their best option. If they were mistaken then they should be provided with more information until they are not mistaken. If they were not mistaken then the government barged in and removed these people's best living option because the government felt it was ugly. That's not very good.

    • alephnerd 4 days ago

      > There must have been reasons why those people chose to live there

      Undocumented status.

      HK was not part of the PRC until 1997, and even today you require authorization to live there.

      Back before reunification, lots of undocumented Chinese nationals would sneak across the fence in the New Territories and then live in the Walled City as it was technically still Chinese territory that was not absorbed by the British during the 99 year lease.

      • immibis 3 days ago

        So did they give those people permanent residency in Hong Kong, or did they just demolish their homes and tell them to fuck off back to the totalitarian dictatorship they escaped?

    • 5040 3 days ago

      Consider the plight of the dentists and doctors:

      >There were some 90 dentists and around 30 doctors operating in the City, for the most part trained in China but unable to operate in Hong Kong without taking more exams. The City provided a handy alternative and they were allowed to operate there without oversight from the authorities. Many were actually very good at their job and attracted patients from a wide area – including a number of policemen to our knowledge – the best of them with smart premises along Tung Tau Tsuen Road that ran along the north side of the City.

  • 5040 3 days ago

    >"people living in squalor is their right!"

    For many, a big part of the appeal was the low costs of living. Surely choosing relative squalor with low prices should be an option?

jansan 4 days ago

A bit unrelated, but since people with Hong Kong knowledge may be reading: How are the Chungking Mansions doing? The atmosphere there was sometimes compared to Kowloon Walled City, and I remember when my roommate stayed there in the 90s he reported that from his window that faced the inner courtyard he could not see the ground, just darkness. Also, it was reported to have rats as big as cats and cockroaches as big as rats (I hope jokingly).

How is it doing now? Still as dystopian?

  • bcsab1 4 days ago

    I have stayed there for 2 weeks last month. It is indeed a distinctive experience. I managed to rent the smallest apartment I have ever been to. When I entered the room I burst out laughing at its size. There was basically nothing but a small bed and a toilet/bathroom where you could have showering while sitting on a toilet. It was definitely a memorable feeling to stay there. Every time you enter the building many (mainly Indian looking) man approach and try to sell you drugs, stolen stuff or prostitutes. I wandered quite a bit around because you always had to wait a lot for the elevator so I used the stairs to go to the 8th floor. There was piss and trash all over the stairs. At first day I was really close to changing my location but I eventually got used to the place. I have witnessed at least 3 fights during the 2 weeks staying there. On the last morning at 6 am when I arrived to the first floor after checking out I heard loud noises and when the elevator opened two guys fell inside fighting each other, accompanied by several woman shouting. I managed to step over them out of the elevator and left the building safely. It was chaotic to be honest. But at least I saw no bugs and rats. Overall I think it might have some resemblance to how it must have felt staying in the Walled City.

    • stormfather 4 days ago

      What brought you there?

      • forgotoldacc 3 days ago

        Not him, but I've also visited. If you ever go to Hong Kong, Chungking Mansion is basically unavoidable. You're almost guaranteed to walk by it at least once if you're going a proper trip around the city. It's right on a major street right near major tourist areas and has cheap places to stay inside.

  • notpushkin 4 days ago

    I've stayed there about half a year ago. [0] Pretty interesting place, although not nearly as dystopian as you describe it! No cockroaches or anything, but ground level is very noisy, and elevator queues are pretty bad.

    [0]: If you want to give it a try, open up any hotel booking website and sort by price – pretty much anything under $25 is in the Mansions.

  • dewey 4 days ago

    I've visited it earlier this year and it seems pretty unchanged ("cheap watches", "need tailor",...). I've stayed in one of the budget hostels there a few years ago, its was interesting but I'd probably not do it again. Waiting 15 minutes for one of the cramped elevators every time you go home gets old quickly.

  • dabreegster 4 days ago

    I stayed there about a year ago, and wrote a bit about it with some photos. Just search this page for "Chungking": https://dabreegster.github.io/prose/dec2023/pt1_hk.html

    • jansan 4 days ago

      Great photos, thanks. The one with the "negative space" must be what my roommate talked about when he could not see the ground from his room window during the day. Btw, back in the 90s they still had some market alleys in Akihabara/Tokyo that looked like the one in the next photo. And it was amazing.

  • scooke 3 days ago

    A slightly more sanitized variety is two buildings away - Mirador Mansion. I still expect to see a fleeing android to come running down the halls when I stay there, a la Zhora chase scene in Blade Runner (less glass though).

  • dagenleg 4 days ago

    A few months ago I had a long layover in Hong Kong, so I did a quick visit - it looked a bit emptyish, though there was still a bunch of budget hostels, food joints and some touting going on. The rats are pretty gigantic though.

  • theonething 3 days ago

    good (and cheap) Indian restaurants there.

chriscjcj 3 days ago

https://youtu.be/S-rj8m7Ssow

This is one of the better documentaries out there about Kowloon. It's in German but you can turn on English subtitles. They got a camera inside and you get a decent taste of what life was like there.

pessimizer 4 days ago

Kowloon Walled City was very neat. If you want to get a feel for what it was like, there's a German language documentary from 1988 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9PZ05NLDww) that was filmed inside of it. This essay, however is pompous word salad of the worst type.

wkat4242 14 hours ago

I really wish the walled city would have been preserved somehow. I never got a chance to see it but it has had so much influence on pop culture. It was one of the big influences of cyberpunk for example. It could have been an open air museum.

steveoscaro 4 days ago

Anyone remotely interested in Hong Kong should read the novel Tai-Pan. That’s some great historical fiction. No idea which parts are accurate, but it’s a fun read.

  • inkyoto 3 days ago

    There is also a history book «Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age» by Stephen R. Platt who goes into events preceding the First Opium War (Macartney's mission to Qing's China in 1793) eventually leading up to the cession of Hong Kong island and the fall of the Qing. Whilst it is a history book, the way the events are narrated and how the story is presented make the book read as it were a fiction story (it is not). A great read all around.

  • dewey 4 days ago

    I finished the sequel of that book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_House_(novel)) this year, can also highly recommend it. The TV show looks cheap...but it actually aged really well and it has Pierce Brosnan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_House_(miniseries)). Can recommend it as well!

    • FireBeyond 4 days ago

      FX made what I thought was a pretty good adaptation of Shōgun. Am hoping they might turn their eyes to the rest of the "series", too.

      • pimeys 3 days ago

        I've watched the FX adaptation and the original from 1980, and I have to say I like the original a bit more. Neither one of them cannot match the book, which I rank in the same level with Lord of the Rings: thick books you cannot stop reading. The television adaptations are passable, but a bit disappointing if you are a fan of the book.

      • finnh 4 days ago

        The recent Shōgun series was surprisingly good, I really enjoyed it.

        Clavell famously has no idea how to end a book - they pretty much _all_ have a deus ex machina in the form of a natural disaster - but they are excellent & fun reads of the days & weeks leading up to it.

        ayeeya, cow chillo

        • FireBeyond 4 days ago

          Hah, yes! I just realized this! (Well, Whirlwind uses a revolution). I'd never connected that between all the books.

zabzonk 4 days ago

William Gibson, Idoru. Heroine Chia Pet ends up (after some adventures, in cyberspace and meat) with place in the walled city. It's a good book.

mrtimo 3 days ago

In the aerial view image (the 3rd image on the page) you can see the walled city next to a park in the foreground). The park is still there today (and now the remnants of the walled city are absorbed into the park).

Here is an aerial view that has a similar orientation [1].

The park is a cycling park, which explains the curvy paths.

[1] - https://www.google.com/maps/search/kowloon+walled+city/@22.3...

MisterTea 4 days ago

Nice book on Kowloon with plenty of pictures: https://archive.org/details/city-of-darkness-life-in-kowloon...

  • dewey 4 days ago

    I can understand why people are getting angry at the Internet Archive if they are offering one click downloads of books you can still buy on the (independent) artists website: https://cityofdarkness.co.uk/order-book/

    Saying that as a donor to the Internet Archive as I support their "public web archiving" goal. This misleading "opensource" collection is full of software, books that are neither open source nor out of copyright: https://archive.org/details/opensource and their reporting tool doesn't even include "copyright infringement" as a reason.

    • jazzyjackson 4 days ago

      "This is the cleaned up version of the original scan, both found in TPB" you ain't kidding!

ksec 3 days ago

Somewhat related there is a recent Hong Kong movie based on Kowloon Walled City [1] that is old fashion Hong Kong Kung Fu with background sets in Kowloon Walled City in 80s.

Unfortunately most of the Neon and Sign Post are mostly gone in Hong Kong. I think people should go and visit Hong Kong to see the last bit of it before it became something else.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_of_the_Warriors:_Wall...

CyberDildonics 4 days ago

I think this title might be just a little on the pretentious side.

cratermoon 3 days ago

Skip the text, take time to look closely at each photograph. Linger and observe each for some time.

jeyoor 4 days ago

There are Heterotopias in the US too. Some of the border regions in Southwest Texas intermittently occupied by cartels or smugglers come to mind.

SoftTalker 4 days ago

Unbelievable that the place wasn't consumed by fire at some point.

  • MisterTea 3 days ago

    It burnt down in its early days when it was a shack town, before the cluster of multistory buildings were erected.

zqfm 4 days ago

KWC is a pretty fascinating place, but all I've ever seen about it is from people on the outside looking in. Are there any accounts from the people who lived there?

Loughla 3 days ago

I never understood why it's called a walled city. It doesn't have walls protecting it.

  • bentpins 3 days ago

    Before it was a settlement it was a military base. It did have walls protecting until 1940, where under WW2 Japanese occupation they were demolished. The name stuck even after. The south gate of the wall remains as part of Kowloon Walled City Park

    You can see an illustration of the wall in the infographic here http://archive.today/2omPT

fedeb95 4 days ago

Looks like that component that somehow works and nobody dares touch it.

snakeyjake 4 days ago

I wish the people romanticizing or fetishizing Kowloon Walled City could have been forced to live there.

They remind me of the urban planners of the 50s and 60s who designed dense barren concrete monstrosities for the proles to live in as part of various urban renewal projects, from the comfort of their suburban garden estates.

  • UniverseHacker 4 days ago

    People aren't romanticizing it in a positive way, they are mostly fascinated by the bleakness of it- and shocked that something they thought was relegated to fiction actually existed in real life. Much of HN grew up as nerdy kids on cyberpunk SciFi like Blade Runner, Johnny Mnemonic, and the Matrix and this looks exactly like that, which is no coincidence, because that aesthetic was largely based on Kowloon Walled City itself, unknowingly to the people consuming it.

    The cyberpunk author William Gibson was aware of and inspired by Kowloon Walled City. Cyberpunk is characterized by "high tech low life" - it is seen as awful and dehumanizing, something people might want to read a book or watch a movie about, but not live themselves.

    In hindsight, the whole Cyberpunk aesthetic being based on real world inhumane living conditions that actually already existed might be inappropriate by modern standards. It is making an amusing fantasy or spectacle out of other peoples suffering- however Gibson, etc. were using this setting mostly because they had a negative view about the impacts of technology on humanity, and were writing fiction to express and warn people about these concerns.

  • WarOnPrivacy 4 days ago

    > I wish the people romanticizing or fetishizing Kowloon Walled City could have been forced to live there.

    In 1987, I would have found KWC a step up from my homelessness.

    > They remind me of the urban planners of the 50s and 60s who designed dense barren concrete monstrosities

    US 2021: People were forced out of long-term rentals and found there was nowhere to go. People with money in the bank became homeless. Concrete monstrosities would have improved their poor options.

    Before eliminating an awful thing, we might want to eliminate the need for it.

  • mrbungie 4 days ago

    Are people really romanticizing it out there?

    I find it really draws my attention in a morbid sense associated to looking at what was a very alien way of living, but I would hate to live in those conditions.

  • 31carmichael 3 days ago

    I wish you could have been forced to live there.

PaulHoule 3 days ago

"the communist reforms from the late 1950s to the mid 1970s" is a little generous; for better and for worse the article seems very aligned to the politics of the current leadership of the "New China"

  • akdor1154 3 days ago

    Not entirely - Tiananmen Square is mentioned along with its outcome. I'd assume the author is aiming for objectivity.