Kowloon - Walled City of Anarchy

You can't convince me that this isn't the pinnacle of urban design

>cheap to live in
>walkable
>takes up very little space

Hong Kong proper would raid it from time to time, and towards its end, even started patrolling it, but it was technically autonomous due to the weird way the Brits dealt with the fort that was there when they initially set up the treaty. This left it quasi-Chinese, but the Brits figured resistance fighters were forming up in there, and cleared it out, claiming it militarily, but never formally.

After WWII, China announced its intent to reclaim its rights to the Walled City. Refugees from the Chinese Civil War poured in to take advantage of British protection (as The Walled City was a Chinese territory but surrounded by British lands), and 2,000 squatters occupied the Walled City by 1947. After a failed attempt to drive them out in 1948, the British adopted a 'hands-off' policy in most matters concerning the Walled City.

So, a bit of both.

Also a death trap and full of mafiosos and weird backalley doctors.

Well, on the plus side, at least one of the mods is old enough to forget that 1992 was 25 years ago. Though I don't think anyone's old enough to forget that 1973 was over 25 years ago - who doesn't also have alzheimer's. Never mind 1898.

Ticks me off, given half of the threads they let breed on this board. Gave them the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was a miss-click, but apparently you are owed an apology.

Still probably safer than the Cabrini Green though.

Given the size of the thing and the maze it had become, raiding was next to impossible, and catching an individual inside there doubly so. Quite often crooks would dash in there never to be found again, which is probably prime among the motivations to tear it down (nevermind all the drugs and sub-standard food it was exporting).

I suspect there was corruptive collusion of a sorts going on for awhile. Triad and coppers doing a "I rub your back you rub mine", with the mafia probably occasionally tracking down some non-Triad crook the authority wanted badly enough to threaten the haven's existence.

Not sure what sort of rules the Triad laid down on the place, but they apparently handled evictions. There were apparently some residential associations who gathered folks to clean and do maintenance, as well as landlords renting who were not necessarily Triad, but reliant on them for eviction enforcement.

*Supposedly* incidents of violence inside were about the same as the surrounding area... But, well, I doubt how good their statistics were (that old Las Vegas slogan was made real here, no doubt), and I also suspect its very existence raised the violence in the surrounding area at least a bit.

>that old Las Vegas slogan
Which is?

I guess he meant the "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" catchphrase.

1993+25=2018>2017
The mod was correct.

Ok. Yaeh I guess it matches.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City

Place was forcibly evacuated between 1991 and 1992, at which point the bulldozing began.

Place was founded in 1898, had a population of nearly 8,000 by the early 50's, and was officially recognized as an extralegal region in 1973. ...And all the really fun stuff happened between 1973 and 1985. By 1989, it wasn't really an anarchist block anymore.

Mod was drunk, and should apologize.

People mix up Triad and Tong and the one can morph into the other depending on circumstances.
Triads are the word westerners use to mean gangster criminals, Tongs are less well understood.
Either way, groups that could fulfil social functions in the absence of state guidance would be appreciated by locals. Got a problem neighbor? The local muscle is always the local muscle. If they eat more than they provide they die out.
Different but similar to Italian Mafia, it's a mistake to equate them.

Good enough, but the OP picture makes it seem that it ended by 1993.

>By 1989, it wasn't really an anarchist block anymore.
Like what? "Come and visit us guys, it's totally safe". lol

Is there a Kowloon photobook or something out there? I loved the footage in Baraka but it was far too short.

See the Wikipedia article. Park was completed in 1993 (94 actually). Demolishing took nearly two years, and suffice to say they didn't do it with people still living there.

Was fully in jurisdiction with its own official Hong Kong police force and patrols by that time - so, aside from the density, at that point, it was just like any other super shit neighborhood, and no longer special.

Well, at it's height, during prohibition, in a few shit hoods under their influence, the italian mafia was similarly acting as a police force, courthouse, and even supplying medical care and, in a few instances, even welfare to residents. So, yes, organized crime can only morph so much before it becomes government, and occasionally, they actually care about the neighborhood in which the bulk of its membership grew up.

...And it's of course a bit scarey how thin the dividing line between government and organized crime really is, and how often one resembles the other.

holy fuck kowloon was crazy i had no idea

the wiki page should be required reading for every ancap faggot

It worked anons. Admit it, this is /ourplace/. The magical fucked up place wher Anne Franck and Charlie would have spend their honeymoon.

Is this the closest we've come to Mega City One?

I don't really see what Kowloon has to do with ancap. The people in the "city" were effectively prisoners, because leaving the city would make them subject to China's vagrancy and tax laws. A lot of the area's problems were built into it, such as the people on the lower levels not getting any sunlight or air, and the high level of violence was largely related to the gang presence in Kowloon, and those gangs weren't created by Kowloon itself, they were just using it as an extension of their territory.

So a libertarian paradise?

>Crime won't rise and assume power when there's no state to police people!
It's literally what any ancap shithole would devolve into.

you now realise blade runner stunk like human feces and rotting garbage

yeah, smell them C-Beams

When i talk about kowloon and ancap i should have stated i was referring to the building itself. Its zoning water sewarage power garbage. Impressive that decentralised unplanned infastructure didnt totally break down during the population explosion, that stuff doesnt usualy scale

Social dynamics on the other hand is inheritanly chaotic and also i just hate psychobabble

just because the police doesn't do anything doesn't mean it's anarchy
the triad was the law in kowloon

It got torn down by the brits

it's not quite mega city one, but it is a fully arcological hab-block

Well even in hypothetical ancapistan you would have protection agencies and residential organizations that would mimic that sort of thing. So basically the functionally same if you rent property. If you own it you would be able to cancel your triad subscription and (hopefully) make a new one with another gang, that's basically the only difference I think

That's not ancap at all. It's just a bunch of poorshits building upon other poorshits, just like brazil

Just realised, that one level from the first Black Ops CoD was set in Kowloon.

yeah and isnt that generaly what happens in completely unregulated societies

Well, if the country is unregulated because of a collapsing state it doesn't really add up to your argument.

I'm that another user, lol they're great videos, I've been re watching them since these threads have popped up.

>can you matcsh muy stylz ?

that was pretty expertly crafted misdirection... props

facinating thread though 11/10

just from my cursory research with kowloon the one thing that got me was [pic related]

air quality. how the hell do you have the insane population density of kowloon, and have that insane 1970's-80's chink smoker percentage

They chain smoke indoors, all of them. How fuck did they even breathe ? Like Seriously ?

OH GEEEZ... are you telling me "history" ie the study of the human story that we can learn from has an arbitrary age_of_our_lord_year limit ????

BAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAH !

It does on this board. But the city ceased to physically exist 25 years ago, ceased to be populated 27 years ago, and ceased to exist as an anarchist quasi-state over 30 years ago. The documentaries linked are mostly from the 70's.

And even if it still existed to this day, we're talking about the city's history. It's not as if we can't talk about Venice cuz it still exists.

Mod was drunk and still hasn't apologized.

you guys are pretty high brow

i have spent more time on Veeky Forums today than ever and thought you guys would be above that shit... shyla stylze died today and legitamite tastefull threads mourning the loss of a human being got deleted because well she was a pornstar and /tv/ was nsfw...... absolutely petty

water streamed everywhere constantly, making things damp and fires less likely

How well known was this place in HK? Its not far from Kowloon, surely it wasn't some urban secret, but a known stain in the cityscape?

Restaurants got cheap ingredients from Kowloon so they definetly knew what it was and in what conditions people lived in there.

Very - it was the biggest thing for miles and the most densely populated spot in all of Hong Kong (and indeed, the world). At one point, nearly half the restaurants in Hong Kong were acquiring quasi-legal foodstuffs from them.

I suspect there are more San Fransiscan's unaware of Chinatown, than Hong Konger's unaware of Kowloon.

I have always found Kowloon Walled City interesting and I would have loved to have visited it because I love Hong Kong's cyberpunk feel. I know the place is a chaotic mess that had to be torn down but I also think it's attractive in a way, and I'm not the only one. There is an arcade in Japan called Kawasaki Warehouse which is based on Kowloon Walled City. The architect actually shipped a lot of the trash, posters, and other misc items from the Walled City in Hong Kong to put into the arcade. A former resident of KWC visited the arcade and said it captured the ambience well.

Randomwire has an article on it:
randomwire.com/kowloon-walled-city-rebuilt-in-japan/

Here's a video:
youtube.com/watch?v=V_2KgQOqzBc

Its questionable if non-codified form of rules that weaves in improvisation, social hierarchy and contextual traditions can be understood as law.

>shyla stylez died today

WHAT

This looks really cool. Nice to see the spirit of Kowloon Walled City captured in some form. I like the Kowloon's Gate reference.

>dat video
Just can't help asking "what game is this?" as ya watch it. (Then all the nostalgia to the balls 80 games appear.)

Question the wisdom of reproducing the Kowloon bathrooms, though at least they stopped at the toilets themselves.

Do wonder if there was any official written law that the Triads set down. I suppose there had to at least be rental contracts.

City of Darkness is a photo book with mostly pics from mid to late 80s about the Kowloon walked city. Good read.

Were the people there ridiculed?

>couldn't build higher because planes would just wreck it
I wonder how tall they could have built if it wasn't for that

Hey this is just a tall favela
I thought the walled city was an isolated aglomeration, or at least surrounded by properly urbanized space, but it was a shithole all around
Why did that area specifically got built up so much? From what the OP says, the wall was torn up long before, so it can't have been that

Apparently police enforced law in those regular slums, but not in Kowloon City.

They build in the area that technically wasn't part of the british controlled Hong Kong

>1987
>he needing air to breathe
Shiggy

Yes, it was built up so much specifically because it was an effectively an extra-legal location, and not a mere favela. It was technically a little patch of China inside British territory, with no Chinese government present. Thus, anyone who didn't want to deal with the law, built there.

I dunno what it's a greater testament to... How a community of anarchists can gather together and make such a beast work, or how a bunch of statists can be so bound by bureaucratic technicalities as to ignore common sense and let that cancer grow to that scale.

Wow this is cool as fuck, thanks for teaching me something new Veeky Forums

I wish the whole board would be informative like this but well

>can fit a bed in the room
>not a board stacked diagonally
Ritzy!

Now I want a cop duo movie with a brit and a chinaman, one sensible the other "street"
They're chasing a criminal through the slums, when the sensible one stops on an invisible line, saying they can't cross because it's Chinese jurisdiction. Then the street cop says fuck it and enters anyway
Of course, with many other buddy cop flick cliches, also kung fu

FUND IT
>starring Liam Neeson and that one Hong Kong nigga that was in Star Wars and XXX

Rush Hour: Kowloon sounds better

Just watch the Rush Hour series

Damn, that is cyberpunk as fuck. I want to go.

KWC was a shithole but there is still a beauty in shitholes.

Found the old thread, but pretty much the only good stuff lost were the vids you posted

desuarchive.org/his/thread/3662020