The Densest City In The World Had a Strange Secret...

Something beautiful that has never existed before and can never exist again was lost. All of Honk Kong holds a deep intrigue for me. Maybe it's the Chinese culture uncorrupted by communist cleansing.

Utterly fascinating example of how the organisms entirely comprise the environment that supports their livelihood. Organisms are environment and environment is entirely comprised of the organisms it supports. They are one process seen from myopic and exoscopic perspectives that make them seem different when they are indeed on process. Absolutely loved this small glimpse into this incredible bit of human history.

I went here about 10 years ago in shenmue 2 lol

I ❤ nerds

This place is like stuff you imagine when you’re a kid. “One day I’m gonna live in a big cube city where every room is connected like a Polly Pocket house, and all my family and best friends will live all around me!”

I was here..Tx you ! :)

Wow, the fact that it got demolished leaves me with such an empty and aching feeling. Kowloon City left me with the impression that it was its own little world in the midst of such a big country, with a community that made it work as seem fit to their conditions. I bet time passed by a lot slower there than in the bigger cities around them. For some reason the picture from the UP movie popped in my mind. That small unchanging cozy old-fashioned house in the midst of tall ever-changing modernized buildings. I'm sure the place also had many problems but I can understand the romanticization of such a place. It's something so far from reality for some that it's hard to imagine. Dystopian, nostalgic, old-fashioned, the sense of connection, time passing by slower and simpler. We can only experience places like that in games now a days.

This is really great and informative, thanks. It's a really interesting place

Great presentation, horrible place to live. Thank you for your hard work.

This was an amazing video! Thankyou!

You have to see Perpa Ticaret Merkezi in İstanbul

Am guessing there are less murders here, per 100 000 people, per year than in the Un Safe Area (USA), especially now that tRumo is president. Kowloon Yes, American lun-acy NO!

Forgot to mention the rapes, murders, human trafficking, starvation.

Keep up the good work! :)

Straight out of sci fi movies

Little Coruscaunt.

So what was the strange secret?

Kowloon Hive City

I've been interested in this city for a long time, but a lot of the analysis was contained in the too-expensive books you showcase here. I geeatly appreciate your analysis of the city here, I learned a lot and you covered the material very efficiently!

If you ever manage to get your hands on the excellent "City Of Darkness - Kowloon Walled City" (or the subsequent "Revisited" edition) books by Greg Girard and Ian Lambert, I highly recommend.

so what's the strange secret?

What came to my thoughts when viewing this video was: it would be intresting to read statistics of misjusticefull crime in the Kowloon walled city and accidents and dangers caused by the fashions of executing things like electricity and water supply: thruout the years of its being in existence as the place of living of people as we know it as ”Kowloon Walled City”, and then to compare that to such of other centers of living: other cities of this planet during those same years, and to relate their sizes and those statistic values to get a picture of the balance of things. I have only read that there was no like a Police in the in -side of the infrastucture of Kowloon Walled City keeping order in a regular basis; schedjualedly, but that sometimes the Hong Kong Plausible(proper) Police departments might have adressed raids into the Kowloon Walled City. The Kowloon Walled City was not however a place of no goodness; it had a christian church and -school for children and assumably other shrine rooms for concentrating the mind to the Ultimate Divine, and it was famed for its dentists that made good teeth implants and so on. We must keep in mind that the people who lived there must have had am established respect to nature and I can imagine what electricity, air and water must’ve meant to those people living there in contrast to their knowledge of the surrounding land of China with its mountains and rivers, lakes and wind. I do not recall having read of thouble about sanitarity and things like wastewater and waste. Perhaps Hong Kong proper cars took thrash from there regulary from its gates and they managed to pipe their wastewater to the general channel and wastewater system? Many small forexample electronic digital devices people had in every country that said ”MADE IN HONG KONG”: might have been made in Kowloon Walled City :)

So facinating kwc was, a type of free city you dont see often.
Reminds me of freetown Christiania but the opposite scale built up.

I am curious to know much more about community and self governance, problem solving etc. Were the systems they created fundamentally the same as other communities/cities? How was power held and shared? Besides the negative aspects it seems there must have been much collaboration and good will within the walls. A visceral sense of ‘in taking care of my neighbor i am also taking care of myself’. How were funerals handled? And births??

How did it not burn down? Or did it?

I have spend there a week in a kind of very cheap "backpacker hotel" with bunk beds everywhere in 1978. Fond memories !

Considering the lack of regulation and the constant building but lack of maintenance or architectural inspection it was a death trap and a devastating collapse claiming many lives that was a when not if senario.

I love your channel in general, but thank you so much for this video! I really enjoyed! Since I was a teenager I love the archiecture of Hong Kong and specially of the Kowloon Walled City. It was an amazing, incredible, quite dystopian and cyberpunk place. I place of survival and life.

But I have suggestion for you, dear Dami: how about to make a video about the aging (and even decreasing) population in the cities of the future, with an older and older population (and less children)? What would be the impacts in architecture and urbanism? This is definetely one of biggest issues of 21st Century, specially in Asia.

Greetings from Brazil. Taiguara

Reminds me of Coruscant City from Star wars

I know it from only how it portrayed in Shenmue 2.

Kowloon my beloved 😍
Never forget what the took from us 😔

The way that she talk it's just hypnotic

Very good!

I stayed here for 16 weeks back in 89, it was amazing, great prostitutes that let you do anything, drugs mainly amphetamine and hash but others as well, i was sad it got tore down, best holiday ever. There was several people how spat and urinated out there window 😂 also throw rubbish so i carried an umbrella all the time, i wish i could try the food again, it was also great.

Another thing which is a point of curiosity for me is whether or not this may have been the inspiration for movies like Ghost in the Shell, Metropolis, and the new version of Total Recall.

And i just came from the Hive City vid. so similiar.

Free HONG KONG!

You need to work on your voice - when you intonate it annoys English ears.

very interesting, indeed, but… girl! even just listening to your voice gives me muscle spasms via emotional convergence, and it hurts. for real.
please, have some mercy on your viewers: have a cup of tea before you start recording, or some candy, or valium, or whatever helps you to relax… just use your normal, natural voice and breath as much as you need between the phrases: it won’t harm you, I promise! maybe you’ll even like it…

Another sensational video. What a place it must have been; I can't help thinking about the souhks in Marrakech, a truly ancient human hub of life. It has that similar 3 dimensional, tightly packed, raw, dangerous, alive feeling. Almost.... Human in a way. Maybe these places are created through an instinctual method from a time long before, thousands of years ago?

Reminded me of a magnificent human coral 🪸 reef. A people working as an organic organism to defy the colonizers encroachment.

Interestin... 🤔

I love your video

I first saw it in 1972. Never ventured inside. More scary than the jungles of Viet Nam.

Great and interesting video about this human hive. While watching it ... I couldn't help but to imagine it could be the 'wet dream' of Elon Musk.

Kowloon map from black ops 1 brought me here

I am somehow sure people went there and ended up dying being unable to find any of its exits.