Why was kowloon walled city built

For one, shading indicates ares that were more built-up at the time. There are also a number of visual techniques to indicate topographical features as well. The full map is well worth exploring as well, as there are a number of beautiful illustrations throughout. Tool tip: Click the X on the info bar to hide it. At this point in time, development in Lower Manhattan extended until about 14th Street , where buildings began to give way to open spaces.

At the time, New York was anticipating massive growth, and the straightforward grid pattern was an efficient way to prepare the city for rapid expansion. In the s, fire was an ever-present danger for city dwellers. In fact, a major fire tore through Lower Manhattan a year prior to when this map was published. This route is still recognizable today as the Harlem Line. One very obvious difference between the two maps is how much land has been reclaimed along shorelines in the area.

Battery Park City, on the west side of downtown, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard are two prominent examples of infill. Midtown Manhattan is worth zooming into for a couple of reasons. First, the outline of Central Park is visible, although the park would officially be approved until almost 20 years later. As well, this topographical map clearly shows the numerous outcroppings spread across the island.

Manhattan was far from flat in the s, and it took a tremendous amount of effort—starting with gunpowder, pickaxes, and horse-drawn carts—to level the land. Looking at these historical maps is a reminder that the New York City we know today is the product of hundreds of years of human effort, and that cities continue to evolve over time.

There are 8 common blood groups but 36 human blood types in total. Here we map the most widespread blood types in every country in the world. But not all blood is the same. Using data sourced from Wikipedia , we can map the most widespread blood types across the globe. Of the 7. The rarest, meanwhile, is AB-, with only 0. Breaking it down to the national level, these statistics begin to change. It is also the most common blood type in Canada and the United States.

The A blood group is common in Europe. Blood provides an ideal opportunity for the study of human variation without cultural prejudice.

It can be easily classified for many different genetically inherited blood typing systems. Our individuality is a factor that helps determine our life, choices, and personalities. But at the end of the day, commonalities like blood are what bring us together. Connect with us. This Fascinating City Within Hong Kong was Lawless For Decades There are very few places on Earth that remain ungoverned, and even the tiniest islands and city-states tend to have rules in place for things like taxation and citizenship.

From Squatter Camps to Functioning Neighborhood There was a tendency to view KWC is an isolated bubble of vice within the city, but the sheer volume of business activity within the informal settlement shows that outside customers were more than happy to benefit from lower priced goods and services.

Children would play on rooftops, the rats were the size of cats and the streets were abundant with brothels, drugs, and unlicensed businesses. The entire area seemed like a vision of a dystopian future for Hong Kong, with chaotic and often illegally constructed buildings, which attracted fugitives, outlaws and other criminal elements throughout the 20th century. It may have been a squalid maze and the most densely populated place on earth, but it was a place that 33, people called home.

It housed everyone from drug addicts to housewives. Now, in its place is the park which officially opened in Amongst the ruins, the only building left standing today is the Yamen — the official offices and residences which were located in the center of the Walled City.

We and our partners use cookies to better understand your needs, improve performance and provide you with personalised content and advertisements. Conditioned by the wars, during the s, Kowloon became a lawless city, taking in anyone running from the Law. In just a few years, the city doubled its population and built a complex of makeshift shacks.

The few administrations that once existed were long gone. They were alone. Then, in , a fire wiped out a large number of wooden huts. Around 2, huts or shacks that were home to 3, families burned to the ground. Far from dispersing, the inhabitants decided to use structural concrete and bricks. These new materials allowed them to build upwards, which they were delighted to do.

That was the beginning of the Kowloon that we are familiar with today thanks to Ian Lambot's striking images, documenting the final years of the city in his iconic book City of Darkness. The Triads, an organized-crime group originating in Zhengzhou, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, occupied Kowloon and controlled this curious complex for decades.

In fact, in , the Hong Kong police confirmed they were not able to maintain control within Kowloon. That was when plans were announced to demolish the city, a decision that was postponed for almost a decade. In March , the demolition of Kowloon began, a process that took almost a whole year, and experienced its fair share of local opposition. Apart from mafias, drugs, delinquents and filth, there were also families, businesses and stores in the dense city.

In reality, the city of Kowloon is not the only one of its kind. The unruly growth of cities, buildings on top of one another, without sewage systems or basic services, were prevalent in ancient times. Cities such as Ur, which dates back to the 5th millennium BC, which we tend to think of with a notoriously distorted romantic vision, were narrow, dark, dirty and crowded complexes, all packed with houses lacking any form of hygiene.

That is how most cities of Mesopotamia were: narrow, without streets or open spaces and full of nooks and crannies. Houses without windows or light that often had a hole in the roof with a ladder propped up to descend into the darkness. What was particularly striking about the city of Kowloon was that it existed for so long in a period that did not correspond to it: a form of urban design from thousands of years back, transported in time.

In , years after this stronghold had been demolished by the Chinese and British authorities, a team of Japanese documentary makers published 'Grand Panorama of the Kowloon Walled City', with a fabulous fold-out spread featuring a detailed cross section of the city.

This cross section drawing is a fantastic reflection of the complexity of Kowloon. A far cry from the low-rise shacks or ground-level expansion. The most densely populated city in the world was a labyrinth of small corridors and staircases communicating thousands of houses in a compact and particularly live network not unlike the buildings of ancient times. Like these, Kowloon was unhealthy, dangerous and with high crime rates.

Each one of these reasons would have sentenced the construction, but all of them together had made 'the building' pose a serious threat to the safety of the region and of the families living in the complex. The demolition of the complex was inevitable in a world with a smart city approach. This article is available also in spanish here. Kowloon: a brief history of the most densely populated place on Earth.

The Walled City of Kowloon The construction of Kowloon dates back to the Song dynasty , a period characterized by the salt trade in the region.

The birth of a lawless city Kowloon is a persistent place. Demolishing the urban chaos The Triads, an organized-crime group originating in Zhengzhou, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, occupied Kowloon and controlled this curious complex for decades.

The archaic and persistent urban design of Kowloon In reality, the city of Kowloon is not the only one of its kind. Related Content. What does it take to be the happiest city in the world?