Kowloon Walled City was once the most dangerous, densely populated place on Earth.
When you think of cities where even police won’t go, normally visions of Detroit will dance through your mind. Apparently China used to have a Detroit of their very own in Kowloon Walled City, a 6.9 acre cesspool in Hong Kong that had no taxes, and no laws. The city resulted as a dispute over ownership between two neighboring lands, and for a long time existed as a dangerous entity all its own.
When it was slated to be torn down in 1987, the city was sealed and they did an official count. The populace of the city was 33,000, with a density of 3.05 million people per square mile. The density of Manhattan in 2012 was 71,323, if that puts things into perspective.
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The 300 wooden buildings of Kowloon Walled City were all connected, and shoddily built. Each person living there had about seven-square-feet of living space, and the city was chock-full of unlicensed doctors, brothels, gambling havens, all overseen by the triads, a Chinese organized crime syndicate. Because of all of this, Kowloon Walled City was a place even the police wouldn’t go.
The city has since been torn down, and a park was erected in its place. Thanks to the internet however, Kowloon Walled City will live forever, if only in photos.
