How Hong Kong's Vertical Village Came to Be

The following is an excerpt from the revised and expanded edition of City of Darkness, the authoritative text on Kowloon Walled City. The book's authors are now seeking funds to faciliate the volume's printing. Help Kickstart their project here. See Guy Horton's critical piece for a different opinion on the Walled City.

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The early phases of the Walled City were characterised by predictable building typologies and the buildings were constructed on the principle of squatters’ rights, with random construction on spots of available land by whoever got there first. Alleyways and passages evolved—unplanned—into the established 'map' of the city, which would remain until it came down. A basic electric supply existed, increasingly burdened by illegal connections that frequently overloaded the system, and the few standpipes supplied the only water. As the need to accommodate the ever growing residential and commercial populations forced it to in the 1960s, the building typology of the Walled City made the leap from two- to three-story residential structures to taller, six- to seven-story ones. This represented an important threshold, because at these greater heights the buildings unavoidably became more complex and required greater labor to realize, reinforced concrete, more investment, and so on. They also required a different way of living. Water had to be transported up to the higher floors by hand. Likewise the propane gas canisters that furnished fuel to cook or heat water. (...)

Metropolis