Dec 24, 2011 | Annotations on the Walled City of Kowloon

About a month ago I came across an interesting article about the walled city of Kowloon, a enclave that had nearly 33,000 inhabitants in an area no more than 6.5 acres. That would be approximately 120 times the density of present-day New York City! Intrigued I borrowed books that I could get my hands on via Stanford, including "City of Darkness", a neat coffee-table photo book written by Lambot and Girard. They mix interviews with historical content that brings the now destroyed city back to life, and I was drawn into this city held together by its mere haphazard structure.

If you'd like to see the entire annotation, click here

Some interesting findings include:

a) the fact that the Salvation Army ran a school within its walls.
b) a Briton named Jackie Pullinger was one of the first white people ever to be allowed into its walls, where she ran a drug rehabilitation clinic.
c) a rudimentary postal system involved officers chalking numbers on walls to determine residency, which was never organized.

Also written on this day..

• 2007: The True Origins and History of the Telegraph