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Redefining urban squalor...
-XC
thenewgreen · 4793 days ago · link ·
Kowloon is such an unusual place for my western mind to wrap it's head around. Here is a great video posted a while back by UserSince1996 that gives some more insight in to the place.
- Despite it being a hotbed of crime many of its inhabitants went about their lives in relative peace with children playing on the rooftops and those living in the upper levels seeking refuge high above the city.
I admire how they leave the innocents alone (at least that is how I interpret it).
lessismore · 4792 days ago · link ·
Looking at the pictures now, it seems quite dirty and oppressive, but while I was living in Hong Kong in the 1970's, it did not feel all that bad. Some of my most prominent memories of HK was buying snacks from the quasi-legal street vendors. I vividly recall "purchasing" a stick of fish balls from a vendor and before I could pay him, he took off running with his cart because he saw policemen coming.
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sounds_sound · 4793 days ago · link ·
Would have loved to roam those corridors. Reminds me of J.G. Ballard's The Concentration City. I'm especially intrigued by the image of the Tin Hau Temple, surrounded by buildings with light just breaking through the grate above. Imagine all of the other interstitial spaces in that web of buildings.
I had a chance to visit some of the barrios (favelas) in Brazil a few years back and one thing that struck me, like in these images, is how you can still live very clean and tidy even in such an unorganized and chaotic mess. It was so strange to walk down filthy alleys and pass by rooms with perfectly made beds and polished floors. But, like in Rio, I bet the stench was almost unbearable. One thing most of us don't appreciate is our access to fresh air. We think that roads are only for cars when in fact, they really help to air a city out as well. I can only imagine what the infrastructure of that place was like.