Kowloon Walled City: Heterotopia in a Space of Disappearance (2013)
mascontext.com
mascontext.com
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)
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.
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.
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
I love this illustration it, gives me the same vibe I got from Richard Scarry books when I was 5.
― Ellen Ullman, Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology
(free with archive account, fascinating book, dedicated to "the first machine that can appreciate the gesture" https://archive.org/details/architecturemach00negr/page/n15/...)
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.
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.
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.
If there was 'code', arguably, nothing would be built in the first place.
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.
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.
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???
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.
At the same time, the grandmother did leave when she could, long before the final demolition, despite her later views on that time.
People form emotional attachment to their home, even if the living conditions are bad.
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.
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.
>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.
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?
How is it doing now? Still as dystopian?
if you want to go deep on it this was a great read (Ghetto at the Center of the World):
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo112348...
[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.
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.
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
https://theperpetualmotionmachine.bandcamp.com/album/gamblin...
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.
Kowloon itself is home to 2 million people and is a much larger geographical area. Walled City was strictly an enclave area around an old Chinese fort within Kowloon proper.
A comparison might be referring to Washington Square Park, Manhattan, New York City as simply "Manhattan".
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...
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...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City_Park#/medi...
You can see an illustration of the wall in the infographic here http://archive.today/2omPT
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.
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.
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.
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.