Mastodawn

Jessica Jul 29, 2023

TIL Kowloon Walled City existed and is the real world origin for many visual representations of oppressive urbanization in cyberpunk media

https://lemmy.world/post/2329560

TIL Kowloon Walled City existed and is the real world origin for many visual representations of oppressive urbanization in cyberpunk media - Lemmy.world

I came across a video on Youtube discussing it (there are several), and Kowloon Walled City is just endlessly fascinating. A few notable videos I found on the subject were: The Densest City on Earth [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YuNvIfM-YA] Kowloon Walled City: Hong Kong’s City of Darkness [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcSBOUpgngM] Inside Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fd56CGnVRU] There is also a book on the city called City Of Darkness Life In Kowloon Walled City [https://archive.org/details/city-of-darkness-life-in-kowloon-walled-city-1993], which I found on archive.org [http://archive.org] in high resolution. It is full of photographs and detailed accounts of the comings and goings within the enclave.

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fubo Jul 29, 2023

Curiously, in cyberpunk media this sort of mega-slum is often portrayed as an excess of capitalist urbanization, whereas in historical reality it was an exclave of “communist” China inserted into “capitalist” British Hong Kong, wherein the “capitalist” authorities had no jurisdiction.

(Edited: Sounds more like the point was that it was effectively nobody’s jurisdiction.)

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TheBucklessProphet Jul 29, 2023

What the fuck are you talking about? In actual reality it was a product of capitalism. Specifically British imperialist capitalism in China. It took until the mid 80’s (40 years after the Communists came to power) for the British to allow China to have control over the area and it was turned in to a park less than a decade later, clearly indicating that the Communists were in no way interested in continuing the existence of the dystopian walled city.

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EhList

Just a note here the UK leased HK from China. As the PRC took over the legitimacy of the previous government it also acquiesced to their previous agreements so it did not take until the mid80s for the UK to allow anything. Their lease was running out and the PRC had absolutely no reason to continue it.

The PRC knocked it down because they had the legal right to and Im not sure the UK treaty would have permitted that.