Kowloon Walled City
The Kowloon Walled City (九龍城寨, originally known as 九龍寨城) was an interesting anomaly in Hong Kong's colonial history. It was China's tiny enclave in the middle of British Hong Kong for over two centuries and it had a colorful existence until it was finally torn down in 1993.
The Walled City (known as Kowloon then) was originally a single fort built in the mid-1800s on the site of an earlier 17th century watchpost on the Kowloon Peninsula of Hong Kong. After the ceding of Hong Kong Island to Britain in 1842, Chinese authorities felt it necessary for them to establish a military-cum-administrative post to rule the area and to check further British influence in the area.
The 1898 Peking Convention (which handed additional parts of Hong Kong to Britain for 99 years) excluded the Walled City, with a population of roughly 700, and stated that China could continue to keep troops there, so long as they did not interfere with Britain's temporary rule. Britain quickly went back on this unofficial part of the agreement, attacking Kowloon Walled City in 1899, only to find it deserted. They did nothing with or to the outpost, and thus sent the question of Kowloon Walled City's ownership squarely into the air.
The Walled City remained a curiosity until 1940, when during its WWII occupation, Japan demolished much of the city to provide building materials for the nearby Kai Tak Aerodrome.
After Japan's surrender, squatters began to reoccupy the Walled City, resisting several attempts by Britain in 1948 to drive them out. With no wall to protect it, the Walled City became a haven for crooks and drug addicts, as the Hong Kong Police had no right to enter the City. The 1949 foundation of the People's Republic of China added thousands of refugees to the population, and by this time, Britain had had enough, and simply adopted a 'hands-off' policy. A murder that occurred in Kowloon in 1959 set off a small diplomatic crisis, as the two nations each tried to get the other to claim responsibility for a vast tract of land now virtually ruled by anti-Manchurian Triads (the Hong Kong organized crime syndicate).
The Triads' rule lasted up until the mid-1970s, when a 1973-1974 series of over 3,000 police raids occurred in Kowloon. With the Triads' power diminished, a strange sort of synergy blossomed, and the Walled City began to grow almost organically, the square buildings folding up into one another as thousands of modifications were made, virtually none by architects, until hundreds of square metres were simply a kind of patchwork monolith. A mere eight municipal pipes somehow provided water to the entire structure. By the early 1980s, Kowloon had an estimated population of 35,000 - with a crime rate far below the Hong Kong average, despite the notable lack of any real law enforcement.
Over time, both the British and Chinese governments found this massive, anarchic city to be a bit much - despite the low crime, if the 'Black Market' ever had a physical location, this would have been it, and needless to say, the sanitary conditions were, well, a bit wanting.
After the Joint Declaration in 1984, China allowed British authorities to demolish the City and resettle its inhabitants. The mutual decision to tear down the walled city was made in 1987. Kowloon Walled City was destroyed in 1993, and the area was built into Kowloon Walled City Park (九龍寨城公園), an elegant park preserving the heritage of the fabled Walled City.
It had 50,000 inhabitants on 0.026 km², and therefore a very high population density of 1,900,000 / km².
See also: Kowloon