The Densest City on Earth 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It would be awesome to have the residents tell their side of the story and how it was living there

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

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.

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.

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!

I find Kowloon Walled City so fascinating and it was really nice to find this video because it brought up what I've always really been interested in about it; community. It's so easy to treat this city as something chaotic and lawless, but there was community and families there and despite it being outside certain jurisdictions, it did as well as any other city because of the people who lived there.

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.

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

Great video!!! I got a chance to go into the Wall city right before it was demolished. Two pastors from Canada visited Hong Kong, and a friend of mine asked me to show them around for a couple days. They wanted to see the Wall City because of Jackie Pullinger. But by that time, the Wall City was already empty, and fenced all around with large pieces of plywood. We walked around outside until we found a piece of the plywood somehow not installed or removed by others. So we went in and walked around. I was shocked by what I saw, truly like a maze, can't see the sky because all spaces were fully utilized for various kinds of structures and cages, electrical wires hanging everywhere,

This Video is so well made, the attention to detail in both visualization and story telling. It’s crazy how such a complex system as Kowloon worked so well for so many years, without going up in flames or collapsing. I’ve only briefly hear of this city before from one of my relatives who used to live near it before it was demolished, but it always fascinated me. I loved this documentary, so huge thanks!

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

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

This was an absolutelly amazing document!! The way you scanned the model and showed it was very cool!

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

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.

It's such a shame that not more photos exist of this place. Kowloon is so incredibly fascinating

Thank you for creating this; I've been fascinated with this place since I read about it previously.

Incredible what humans can be programmed to endure. I kept thinking that one loose electric wire, a lightening strike, or one tipped over oil lamp and the entire 6 acres would burn. Thanks for posting this expose on Kowloon. It was eye opening and shocking.

Despite all the craziness of Kowloon Walled City, it's really a miracle it ever existed. They just built random stuff on top of and beside and within each other and nothing ever collapsed, set on fire, blew up, or who knows what. Like mail could be delivered to addresses inside. It's impressive such a thing ever existed.

As a Hongkonger, I have to say I am astounded by the documentary. I am rather young, so I havent seen the Walled City in its packed form, but I have been to the "ruins" of Kowloon walled city many times. I honestly never knew it was such a packed place with a history like that. Another thing I might want to add is that in Hong Kong, nowadays Kowloon Peninsula is split up in two districts, Yau Tsim Mong District and Kowloon City distict. Even if the walled city wasnt given to UK in the second war, currently, with the current boundaries of ddistricts, the Kowloon Walled City is considered to be in Kowloon City district, which is in Kowloon. So no Kowloon Walled CIty is not in the New Territories. Anyway loved your documentary, thanks!

hey man this was a great video and so much information about this place you found. Way to go. Stay blessed

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

I know from everything I've read and heard that life inside the Kowloon Walled City was rough, unsanitary, uncomfortable, and unhealthy, but I can't help feel a forbidden desire to travel back in time and experience what it was like. It's such a unique and intriguing community, the architecture in particular but also just the history of it, seems so cool and alluring.

Always been fascinated by Kowloon Walled City. Dystopian sci-fi material that actually existed. Great vid, thanks

Excellent video!! I love learning about this place and I really didn’t know how established it was. Especially how mail and letters worked… that really changed my perspective a lot! Thank you again!

You've actually gave me insight why my parents were able to get from Hong Kong to UK, with this story about Hong Kong itself and relation to this video about Kowloon Walled city! Insightful and appreciated without me actually looking into it myself, but accidentally haha

Back in the day (I’m a HongKonger) Kowloon city was kind of an unspoken failure in our city. We never talked about it but everyone knew what it was about and what it was like. We didn’t teach it at school and not even the parents would want to talk about it. I’m glad people of the west get to know this story as I truly think it was a feat humans would never be able to achieve ever again 😂. I remember asking our teacher what was in the city and he told us it was a crammed isolated waste with very poor governing, it was literally like a place without rules. The teacher told us about how people from the mafia would set their base there just because there wasn’t anyone controlling the city. I was fascinated by those stories but sadly not much concrete information is known of the city. Edit: I see many people in the comments saying the city is cool but you’d be wrong, though there was some kind of “order” the entire city was just a mess

The Kowloon Walled City is one of the most interesting cities to ever exist. No other city was built or grew like it did, with it being more like a single living organism than the separate, independent buildings we usually think of when we think "city". There's also the fact that it all came together without any planning of regulation, you think this would result in clashing buildings and chaos, but it all came together neatly in the end.

Incredibly well edited and thought out video. This channel has serious potential1

This was incredible story-telling. Thanks for your effort.

I've been super fascinated with Kowloon Walled City for years, ever since I read it is the densest population on Earth in history, but very little literature in English. Your animation blew me away, and together with the backstory, the culture of this lawless patch of land, I cannot put in words how incredible this video is.

Amazing style and editing!

I love the 3D model you created of this city! Great video, lovely editing.

this is by far the best depiction of the walled city I've ever came across, u earned a sub for me.

Hongkonger here. This is honestly the best documentary about the Kowloon Walled City I've ever seen. This is the first time I truly understand the scale of the city as well as how it came to be in the first place. I live not far from the location of the city, and have only been to the remaining park once when I was little. I was born in 2000, not long after the demolition of the city and the closing of the nearby Kai Tak Airport. I've heard from my parents the horrifying yet astonishing scenes from the past. I've always felt a disconnection, and this is the first time I truly marvel it and see how they've influenced pop culture. Again, thank you so much for making this!

I knew someone who live in Kowloon walled city during his childhood, rather than "lawlessness, chaotic, or hellish condition" he told me that he fondly remember most people in that walled city are kind and helpful, of course everyone knew (including him as a kid) a kindergarten or primary school in the morning become brothel at night and Triads rule the place.

The best RU-vid video I’ve seen on the Kowloon Walled City: Great work!

I used to have a profound fascination for this place, and for a while I kept reading lots about it and looking for photos everywhere. I wish I had the chance to visit before it was demolished. Thank you for bringing such an interesting topic to your channel.

A lot of video games in the '90s were inspired by Kowloon Walled City. It really makes me wonder if any other such place will come into being in the distant future.

Informative as always Neo.

This is pretty much the only video that has ever made me want to visit a park/monument! Very well made video; I don't usually like history videos, but this was fascinating enough for me to watch to the end!

hearing stories from my father about living here. He said a lot of the news you hear about the walled city is true, but at the same time he spoke about the immense sense of safety and community he felt while growing up there. Something he said he never felt while living in the states. or at least he said he felt a different version of safety and community. He spoke about how the media views the traids negatively, but while living there they felt like big brothers taking care and protecting their own people

I remember being a teen in Highschool, we had a foreign exchange student who claimed his grandparents lived there for a long time. He said he was inside only once with his parents, and that the whole place was an insane pile of flammable garbage. I always wondered how it actually was. I couldn't imagine who fought the small fires or small time thieves.

The Kowloon Walled City is the most depressing thing I've ever seen... but at the same time it's fascinating to see that this managed to be built as a huge conglomeration.

This video was so good it made me immediately go on twitter and block xqc

since i subscribed i've been hoping yall would make a video on this!!! what a treat!!!

I was a 16 year old deck boy on my first voyage in a Liverpool based cargo ship in 1959. We were berthed in HK for a few days and one evening I went ashore in Kowloon for a stroll. I ended up walking around in this walled city, completely lost. After a while I tried asking people for directions with no luck no luck. Eventually I found a way out at 4AM by flagging down a rickshaw, and getting back to the ship. It was a very scary experience but I was never threatened physically but got plenty of dirty looks.

Wonderfully interesting topic and great video quality

wow this was so well done, props to you for the great video

I have family friends who lived in Hong Kong. When I visited in 2016 we went to historical sites and this was one of the places we visited. It is insane how Kowloon Walled City went from a military fort to a densely packed city block to the beautiful park it is now.

I was born and lived in Hong Kong up until I was in grade 6. I remember going on a field trip to this park and seeing this model and being fascinated by it; I have a picture of it somewheres; 9 years later I’m pursing a degree in urban planning and just as equally fascinated by it. Thank you for all of your content, your videos are the best

There's something so eerie about this. Especially the pictures. So tight and suffocating, it just gives me strange vibes.

One thing that has struck me on each of my trips to HK to visit family - no matter the timing or the varying years between - have been how things... are ALWAYS changing. Each time I go back, it's feels like I'm visiting a place that is both familiar as home but also as strange and different as an evolving puzzle may be.

I spent some time at Kai Tak in 1972 with the RAF and visited the area around The Walled City in a place called 'Stinky's Market'. A wonderful - and enduring memory. Thank you for clarifying a couple of pieces of it's history I wasn't aware of. They make my memories even richer.

According to my friend who lives in Hong Kong, in the park where Kowloon Walled Ciry used to stand there sometimes is an older man who is there who will talk about his experiences living there.

This is an absolutely stunning documentary. So much I did not know.

Thanks for such a well thought out and eye opening video.

dude i went down a kowloon rabbit hole about a year ago and i think ive seen literally every video on youtube about it. It saddens me that i will never be able to see it myself or get modern high quality footage of it because damn does everything ive seen just look so incredibly fascinating.

I never looked much into Kowloon city, but the few media depictions I saw always portrait it as a dystopian nightmare - and granted, it probably was that in part. Your video showed me a bit of the other side of the story for the first time, thanks! Also, the new park that stands in its place looks gorgeous!

This is honestly horrifying to me, considering my life goal and ideal place to live has always been a homestead on a 250 acre wooded farm, living just me and my immediate family. And that city was 40x smaller with 3300x as many people. My god.

I always thought the walled city was amazing and beautiful even in its filth and poverty the way the people came together and made a community

You were right. This was very easy to romanticize. I think the city itself is such a fascinating concept, and works great in media & entertainment as a setting.

I learned about the kowloon walled city when I was in primary school, and it was always depicted as a place of crime and overall negativity. You really changed the perspective of my impression of the city and the people that resided in it. Thank you for bringing this piece of history to more people around the world!

This video, this subject is a huge source of inspiration creatively for me. The history is amazing incredible too!

At the beginning of this video I was a little skeptical because I have seen countless other videos on this city that all pretty much explained the same thing about it, showing the same stock footage. But I feel like you added on to those videos a lot, especially with the history. There isn't much about the earlier days and how it was actually built.

While in Vietnam in 1970 I took and R&R in Hong Kong. One of the places I visited was this walled city. I watched for a couple of hours of the building of multi story living units and what was fascinating, bamboo was used for scaffolding reaching as high as 50 or 60 feet. These erections of temporary scaffolding was tied together with smaller strips of the pliable bamboo. Amazing and I loved being there, but I could not live like that. Tons of memories and thanks for this great video. Wonderful history lesson of a very unique place called Hong Kong.

Phenomenal video. Well done.

This was a great video. Very well made and helpful to remember part of our History

there are 2 things that pop in my mind. 1 : Hard to explain, but despite the chaotic and possibly unsafe/unhealthy conditions, the city in a weird sense, was beautiful with its own means. theres a type of charm of how the city was, the visual look of the buildings screamed "Alive" to me. the city had a look that made it feel alive. it in of itself, was an art piece. 2 : again, despite how harsh the buildings are, and the fact the buildings might have been unsafe as all heck, The city proved that, despite no actual official governmental figure, an immensely dense Population of refugees, Proved that there could still be order. If it wasnt for Kowloon, i dont think people would have thought of that type of visual aspect for fictional cities. things like Stray, and maybe even Cyberpunk 2077, use this type of visual style. Stray prolly being THE BEST example of it for games i've played. I think in the future, if populations get too bad all over, cities like this, but with more safety and health in mind, something like this could thrive in the future if needed.

The more I learn about Kowloon the more interesting it is. The triads actually did set up an (albeit irregular) waste management system. They would clean up the trash left on the road and between buildings so that paths remained clear. They also had pension of their older members who retired. There was also a ministry held by an American women who helped the drug users in the city, and she even had a deal with the triads than anyone who came to her would be safe, even if they were former gang members. Many workshops created metal and plastic items, people made noodles and spring roll wrappers and they sold for even cheaper than machine made goods- which is how they ended up at fancy restaurants and businesses within the rest of Hong Kong. At the end of Kowloon, people tried to refuse to leave, even putting up tents outside the city hall in Hong Kong.

Good stuff 👍 Thank you 💜

This was really good great work

Kowloon is probably the most fascinating city that I hadn’t known about until recent years. All these people from different walks of life coming together to form a community that, while dysfunctional, still provided order. A “modern-day” rise of civilization, in a way. I almost wish I could have seen it with my own eyes. Very well made video. Subbed.

I lived in HK 40 years ago in my early 20s. This was called Kowloon Town to differentiate it from Kowloon proper. I went there half a dozen times to see a doctor. I was in a lot of pain so did not pay any attention to my surroundings which to me were not dramatically different from some other places in Kowloon.

I never say this but I randomly came across this video and I'm an instant subscriber. Amazing work.

SHENMUE 2, a video game that originaly came out on xbox (before xbox 360) and recently released on the new xbox systems, has this city for the last half of the game, soooooo much exploration open world like eviroment tons of places up and down to go all through the city it is beautiful.

I think what's more fascinating is the fact that this has been a habit of human city building for a very long time. Just at the dawn of civilization give or take ten thousand years ago, cities were structured like tall mounds with very few roads through them. Modem cities have so many regulations that we've grown accustomed to organized sprawls, but Kowloon touches on a much more primordial conception.

I have seen just about every video on Kowloon there is & I would give ANYTHING to have even 15 minutes to walk around in that building. I am so sad they tore it down instead of doing something different. It is my favourite concept. A mix of dystopian hell & an odd utopian underbelly of comraderie, love & prosperity that is rarely seen in life. There were so many wonderful & amazing things about this place & there are deep dives on this that illustrate the wonderful things about it. But it was, for sure, a horrible place to endure living. I'm sure the people who lived there have a fond nostalgia for itike no other. That mixture of love & hate that you feel when you got through a really rough time but had really good times during that rough time with really good people. I would just seriously do *anything* to be given time to walk around that building, either empty or when it was thriving. I'm just srsly so upset that it was torn down. Upset for the residents. Upset for the history it held. Upset for the things it could have inspired, allowing poor & homeless people to take control in a different way. And selfishly upset that I'll never get to see it with my own eyes. God, I love this place. This video was such a beautiful overview. Like I said in a separate comment, the graphics & music choices are so top tier. Absolutely drooling over the graphics. So smooth & glossy. Adored every second of this. Thank you for this video. ❤

i love this, just the fact you can turn a corner an end up in a random persons shop and guy some wacky shit that might end up becoming your new favorite snack is just mind blowing to me

I was expecting you to say that it's only business was crime related organizations stuff, but the fact that you mentioned dentist's, food processing and other unlicensed business thriving first made me realize how much dystopian movies skewed my perspective XD In the end even in the worst of conditions people are still people and most want to make good honest money. The people that gathered there just needed a chance to grow and it seems that a majority did manage to grow. I hope that they had a good life after they were forced to move out.

The Kowloon walled city It reminded me of an extremely concentrated favela, favelas are similar styles of social construction, regions of high population density and little state activity, but the reason why they exist is a little different than a geopolitical conflict between two countries, favelas in Brazil are purely existing by state incompetence and lack of an bad administration, The urban composition has led to an escape of poor families to regions that are cheaper to live in and still provide viable access to urban centers, slowly these groups were concentrating on the edges of the big Brazilian cities and forming small communities of "Kowloon's city", the government did not care about such incompetence and little by little favelas were formed as communities outside the control and margins of the state and society, unfortunately these regions are moved by gangs like Kowloon walled city, despite the existence of a government, its negligence will not prevent the survival of society as a whole, ignore the existence of this social portion and of its origins is to lose the feeling of being human, of empathy and of believing in a better world. Sometimes people just want to live in peace.

I'm curious about how you made the 3d reconstruction of these? The presentation is great

This guys educates me of some great histories of our world, I love this channel. Thanks man.

For those going "wow, this would be great as a dystopian video game setting", Shadowrun Hong Kong which is set in a futuristic version of this exact city might just tickle your fancy

I will say, one of the main reasons why the walled city wasn't as chaotic as we might have thought, was because of culture. Let's be honest, if one of these kinds of cities popped up in the U.S it would be an absolute hell hole. Even more of a hell hole than it was at its worst.

Very nicely put together

Nice video. Thanks. Have you considered looking at other places that might be more densely populated? Sadr City with over a million residents is a good example.

My dad said that KWC by the late 80s was a place you didn't want to go inside without someone from there. Everyone knew each other within the walls and that waltzing in uninvited was a sure way to get into trouble.

I have lived in the walled city when I was very young. So I don't have a lot of memories of living there, except for the narrow stuffy alley ways and all the small businesses. I'm glad they tore it down. Nobody should live like that. Sadly there are lots of people now that lives in even worst condition than those that had the endure the living conditions in the walled city.

Thanks for this look at a really amazing place!

I visited the site of the Kowloon Walled City. It is a park now with a small memorial. If you didn't know the history, you could easily miss the fact that 33,000 people used to live there.

Imagine the relief of the last generation of adults knowing the children are moved to somewhere with light

Thank you for connecting the dystopian fantasies with Kowloon wall city. That is the where those form of arts inspire from. So many people think that it is from Japan, but actually indeed it is noted by Japanese then made art out of and popularized it, the origin is undoubtable Kowloon wall city.

I only know this place because of the manga titled: Kowloon Generic Romance, I really love the vibe that the author created It really is a special place