THE LEVEL ABOVE

Truly amazing how humans find a way to build themselves some kind of home in the most unbearable conditions. This reminds me of the pirate utopia of Kowloon. Masterpieces regarding to alternative architecture..

Article from Dailytonic.com

In South America the slums are attached to the outskirts of mega-cities such as Caracas and Mexico City like wasps’ nests on a cliff face. In a hilly island city like Hong Kong, however, living space is limited. Here you only see the laboriously constructed huts made of corrugated iron and planks of wood in which the poorest of the poor live if you look upwards – they occupy, to put it in cynical terms, a penthouse location.

Some of these rooftop shacks, which in the year 2006 after the government’s first slum clearance programme still housed 3962 people in 1554 households, are up to three storeys high. Improvised structures made of ladders and bits of furniture create connections between the individual parts of the buildings and join these impoverished dwellings into complete rooftop settlements – sociologists even talk of a “self-organising niche architecture” and point to the utopian aspects of this urban way of life.

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KOWLOON - MODERN PIRATE UTOPIA

City of Darkness is a book about the now-demolished Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong.

“Kowloon” means “Nine Dragons ”. After an eviction process that took years and cost billions of hongkong-dollars, the city was destroyed in 1993. Only a park remains. While it lasted, though, it was the closest thing to Pure Anarchy the world has seen outside of a war zone.

Another article on Kowloon can be found here

"Here, prostitutes installed themselves on one side of the street, while a priest preached and handed out powdered milk to the poor on the other; social workers gave guidance, while drug addicts squatted under the stairs getting high; what were children's games centres by day became strip show venues by night. It was a very complex place, difficult to generalise about, a place that seemed frightening but where most people continued to lead normallives. A place just like the rest of Hong Kong. "

—Leung Ping Kwan, City of Darkness, p. 120

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PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

http://rapidshare.com/files/361331688/City_of_Darkness_-_Life_in_Kowloon_Walled_City.part1.rarhttp://rapidshare.com/files/361345491/City_of_Darkness_-_Life_in_Kowloon_Walled_City.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/361347050/City_of_Darkness_-_Life_in_Kowloon_Walled_City.part3.rar

 

Kowloon Walled City: The Modern Pirate Utopia

Kowloon Walled City was a tiny Chinese enclave (1899 - 1993) that was located in the middle of British Hongkong for decades. Originally a military fort , it developed into an extremely dense , largely ungoverned urban settlement during the mid to late 20th century. From 1899, these tenacious squatters had repelled the British, the Japanese and every would-be landlord and “property owner” in the history of Hong Kong.

“Kowloon” means “Nine Dragons ”. After an eviction process that took years and cost billions of hongkong-dollars, the city was destroyed in 1993. Only a park remains. While it lasted, though, it was the closest thing to Pure Anarchy the world has seen outside of a war zone.

At it’s most overgrown peak in early 1987, Kowloon Walled City was home to 50,000 inhabitants. Although the Walled City was for many years a hotbed of criminal activity, most residents were not involved in any crime and lived peacefully within its walls. Numerous small factories and businesses thrived inside the Walled City, and some residents formed groups to organize and improve daily life there.


It’s also worth meditating on how Kowloon came to achieve their “hands-off” status: by kicking up such a profound shit-storm of noise and problems, every single time someone tried to exert their authority, that everyone in power simply gave up. British policy came to regard Walled City as something of a hornets nest “‘ best not to be kicked unless absolutely necessary.”

Perhaps the lesson here is that there are no little things when it comes to defending your freedom. ..