The Densest City on Earth

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A closer look at Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, the most densely populated place that ever existed.

Images via Getty, AP Newsroom
Map source by MapTiler / OpenStreetMap Contributors via Geolayers 3
Additional music by:

[Zachruff]

honestly, its a miracle that the whole thing didnt go up in flames at some point, you'd think a massive fire would have started from something be it a lantern or the heavy industry that happened in there.

[SuperWolfman]

Kowloon is forever the model for incredibly dense dystopian science fiction cities.

Night Runner, Dredd, Cyberpunk - all of them you can see the inspiration from the insanity that was Kowloon.

[JasonParmenter]

There was a belief among futurists that Kowloon would be the model of future cities, densly packed to the point that it almost becomes ungovernable outside of wealthy areas. This is because it was believed that when countries became more prosperous the birth rate would go up. This is why it served as an inspiration for cyberpunk futuristic settings. We now know that the opposite happened.

[SaItogaming]

this would be a killer setting for a detective crime drama game about the triads

[hyskaris-]

Fun fact:
after the Walled City was evacuated, the district served for one last film in 1993 Crime Story starring Jackie Chan.
during an important action scene of the film they made many explosions in this district which marked the beginning of its destruction.

[PorkShark]

Great documentary. My father grew up in HK, but worked in Kowloon Walled City, delivering propane tanks and 50-lb rice bags up 10+ flights of stairs to its residents, for 20+ years

[AkathChip]

As someone born in the 90s, I sometimes forget how much has changed in just my short lifespan. To me, the time frame of when it was torn down still feels like it’s only been about a decade ago. Can’t believe there’s a park with so many fully grown trees already

[norrishy]

The way Neo explains and the speed he uses fits me really well. As someone whose first language is not English, I find it both educational and recreational watching these videos! Excellent graphics and modelling!

[EchoBravo]

I flew into HK in the late 1980's and I was STUNNED how close the plane came to buildings adjacent to the flight path. I remember our plane was STILL in the air, close to landing, yet I could see the TV sets in the different apartments ih the buildings adjacent to the runway flight path. I could even sort of see what the residents were watching on their TV's as we came into land. THAT"S how tightly packed the whole area was.

[ComboBreakerHD]

I learned about Kowloon walled city from my math teacher in grade 7. We took the population of Kowloon, measured it against its area, came up with a density, and calculated that the entire global population which at the time was 6bn - if crammed into a density of Kowloon, would roughly take up the area of Rhode Island.

[tedcleveland]

Imagine if they didn’t demolish it and turn it into a museum it would be the biggest tourist attraction on earth.

[Allplussomeminus]

The reason this video is so short is because he doesn't endlessly tease point after point. He simply says what, why, when, where and keeps it moving. And I appreciate that. Subbed.

[animeenjoyer]

I grew up in Hong Kong and this video explained the Kowloon Wall City better than most of the local documentaries

[ryoga]

I vividly remember walking around Kowloon in the Sega Dreamcast game "Shenmue II". It was so awesome to be able to (even virtually) explore that crazy city!

[mr.badluck]

I am a Hongkonger and I have to say, this is the best documentary about the Kowloon Walled City so far. Even better than local TV channel's in some parts.
One of my boss lived there when he was a child. What he told me was quite different than popular belief. Maybe he was lucky, or the City was still in early days.
Contrary to impression, he said the neighborhood was peaceful and like to take care of each other.

[nawwafhusein]

Imagine a retro noir story-driven game set in a semi fictional, open world Kowloon walled city which you can enter almost every buildings and rooms. You play as one of a very few private investigators in Kowloon and you have to navigate the city overcramped spaces filled with mysteries and suspense, leading up to some multiple endings depending on your gameplay. So much potential.

[samuelnicholls]

The editing and structure of this video is amazing. Def one of my fav vids

[TenshiLove]

Visiting kowloon in shenmue 2 introduced me to the concept. It was portrayed well as a place of darkness and of light. Many of the people in the tightly packed internal streets of the game were happily living their lives in peace while the main character sought out the dark underbelly of the city. Its always been in the back of my mind knowing that its based on a real place that used to exist. When i played the game as a kid i thought it was a totally seperate plsce, but knowing it was within hong kong (where the bulk of the game takes place) makes alot of sense

[eesktv]

its really hard to even fathom the fact that this city existed in real life and not in a dystopian science fiction movie

[Toliman.]

I visited here with my dad back in the mid 90s, he took his car to get serviced in a small engine repair shop facing the airport/runway side. They even had remote control helicoptors in the shop, it was just fascinating to see the streets about 2 to 3-people wide, 10 story high deep lanes that couldn't fit a bicycle, and the Noise of landing/approaching planes would scream and rattle, echo through the streets for minutes after the plane had landed, because it faced the runway. The strange part was that you were so 'deep' nestled in, the lanes made the sound much louder than it was outside of the block. I think we had to walk 5 or 6 blocks to get a taxi, as they didn't want to stop nearby.

It was a kind of urban wasteland, nothing at all like what you'd find near the MTR train stations or 'nice' but dubious locations, the Dentist/Butchers were probably the nicer businesses you could have chosen, honestly. If we had walked around the block, it probably would have been a lot more jovial, but I never got a sense of it being 'criminal', just ... layered. Too many people were there, walking past and going places outside/inside at the same time.

The piles of woven red/blue striped bags, the large plastic and metal drums near lampposts, waiting to be 'picked up', et al. The Smell and ambient heat, was incredible. There also seemed to be a lot of one-chair restaurants, but that's not always a sign of a real business, Sham Shui Po also had a lot of these 'friendly' shops with people silently standing around and checking everyone out while smoking.

HK harbour at the time had a ... oil/sewage/curdled milk/diesel 'perfume' to everything, alternating with Milk/Urine/Diesel... but Kowloon was just 400% stronger than the harbour's "cooked" Effluent smell. I was told by my dad's friends the smell was because they'd boil off used cooking oil for the restaurants, and recycle it back into the restaurants by bleaching and mixing it back. The smell was indescribable, honestly. If you told me it was sewage, It could have been, but it had a very 'factory' chemical sense, mixed with food/cooking.

And, they'd also use fire ash with harbour water diesel/oil runoff. Various dock-boats would boil off sewage and diesel runoff into this 'gutter oil' or 'spit oil', sic. Various 'businesses' existed between the two places. Essentially because it was the 'open side' of the laneway, they would blow the residual air towards the airport side where people wouldn't be standing around ... due to the heat/noise.

This was back in the 90s when you could still land in Kai Tak and see people watching TV in their apartments as the plane is descending, folding laundry, eating dinner, etc. It wasn't until I was standing on the street just outside that I got the full vertigo/sensation of how loud a 747 is when you are within 50-100m, and can eventually see it rocket past and taxiing. I never went into the City per se, just standing outside you understood how fractured an existence/reality it was. You would probably get stuck easily if you were a bit overweight, the lane seemed to be both vertically and horizontally crooked at places as well, where a footpath corner was higher than the building entrance, or vice versa. blocks weren't aligned either, so a 'newer' section would be narrower than the ones around it, etc.

Especially how much that density stood out from driving past or flying past. It was sort of "Peak Hong Kong" more than walking on 'tourist' Victoria Road or taking the ferry, rather than taking the MTR train over. It definitely wasn't on the tourist list of things to do, because even locals would avoid the area. FWIU, once they tore it down, a lot of the locals moved out into the NT areas, basically 'villages' set up along the mountains, because they didn't want to return to china, or couldn't return via the KCR train/border.