1. Introduction

The following project takes the case of Kowloon Walled City as a cultural and geographical truce. The Kowloon Walled City, herein referred to KWC or Walled City, was a Hong Kong based city described as one of “history’s great anomalies” (Fraser, 2017). The 6.4-hectare enclave was known for its unique architecture and its densely packed, largely unregulated urban settlement that existed until its demolition in 1993 (Benoit, 2023). Initially, it was a Chinese military outpost but later evolved into a sanctuary for squatters, illicit businesses and marginalized communities during the British rule in 19^th century (Crawfold,, 2023). An estimated 30000 people lived in the Walled City during 1950s and 1960s (Benoit, 2023). Located near Kowloon City District, KWC developed into an area for illegalities due to low government oversight. This analysis draws upon concepts of urban cultural geography to explain how geographical and cultural perspectives resulted to the Walled City.

Drawing from Taylor (2014), the term ‘cultural geographical perspective’ is a study on the relationship between culture and geography by investigating the linkage between society, cultural values, practices, material expression and artefacts of people as well as the cultural diversity and plurality of society, taking note of how cultures are distributed overs space and how people make sense of these places. All these helps to explain the existence of social significance in those meaningful places. It also consists of concepts, for example, place, landscape, and social practice, parsing how cultural meanings and power dynamics guide communities and their interactions, correlations with their surroundings, hence influencing urban phenomena such as Kowloon Walled City. More specifically, this project seeks to draw upon the central concepts of place, landscape and social practices for its empirical analysis.

The concept of place, which Stedman (2016) terms as ‘Sense of Place’ (SOP) is a good approach when seeking to understand people-place relationships grounded in geographical location. In this project, I adopt the definition by Gottwald et al (2022) who describe SOP as the meanings and emotional connections that people develop towards a place. According to this project, landscape describes the densely built structures representing the social neglect by British and Chinese authorities while social practice concept encompasses the informal economies, cultural interactions and survival strategies that thrived through the Kowloon Walled City unregulated space (Gong, et al., 2022).

This research references the structuration theory suggested by Anthony Gidden, a British social theorist. Mentioned in the structuration theory, Gidden states that human actions are either enabled or constrained by structural contexts, for instance, political neglect. (Gidden, 1991). In regards to this research, the theory helps to explain the phenomenon of residents living in the Walled City navigating and adapting to its nature full of chaos and its surroundings and environment.

3. Empirical Analysis

The Kowloon Walled City’s unique style of development is deeply related to its geography and culture. The Kowloon Walled City is geographically located in Kowloon City District, and is adjacent to Kai Tak Airport. Originally built as a Qing dynasty military garrison, it became an administrative area during British colonial rule. While Hong Kong was ceded to Britain in 1842, the Walled City remained nominally under Chinese jurisdiction, creating a political vacuum. Neither the British nor the Chinese governments governed the area, resulting in its eventual transformation into an unregulated area. The British government only needed Hong Kong to serve as an entrepot, without intention for them to compete with the Chinese government for the jurisdiction of Kowloon Walled City.

Following the Japanese occupation in World War II, the Walled City saw massive influx of employee fleeing from conflicts on the mainland China. The Walled City experienced raised population density to a new level. By 1950s, KWC was home to 30,000–50,000 people on only 6.4 hectares of land. Owing to the high population on a small place and lack of legal oversight facilitated the proliferation of illegal activities such as gambling, prostitution, and quack doctor services and hence the Walled City became a hot bed of crime.

Culturally, the Walled City was a blend of various cultures. The refugees who fled to Hong Kong from the mainland China brought in their cultural practices while the British colonial rule brought in new culture of Western values. Thus, cultural mixture of these cultures along with the spatial limitations of the enclave led to a chaotic social environment. Due to the small and closed geographical environment of the Kowloon Walled City, it was not politically supervised by either Chinese, British, or British Hong Kong governments. It was also not affected by urban planning. Residents adapted by constructing tall high-rise structures that maximized as much vertical area as possible and thus the city became a chaotic network of closely interconnected buildings without any formal architectural design or planning. According to Crawfold, (2023),there were about 350 buildings with heights of 10-14 stories, occupied by 10700 households. With this status, the city continued to accept refugees hence it became more and more densely populated.

The Walled City also lacked a mainstream value in culture and had no leading power to impose moral constraints. As a result, the walled city fell into the power struggle of the underworld. The chaotic state of the Kowloon Walled city made the government less able and less willing to regulate it, eventually leading to anarchy. Thus, the unregulated nature resulted to social stigma with KWC being portrayed as a hub of crime and squalor overshadowing the community’s resilience and ingenuity. However, plans to demolish it emerged in the late 1980s and residents were relocated in 1993 to pave way for its renovation and redevelopment.

The existence of the Walled City is a cultural memory of colonial Hong Kong and is an example of how socio-political abandonment and survival of the people intertwine. It makes Hong Kong people in the post-colonial era to reflect on the past history. Its chaotic landscape symbolized the failures of colonial governance but also the ingenuity of its inhabitants in creating a functioning society within an unregulated environment.  This duality offers a view of how minorities survive inequality and abandonment, pointing to issues of urban design and equity in postcolonial cities. As a slum, the various phenomena that occur inside the Kowloon Walled city, such as rampant crime and dense population, reflect that Hong Kong, where the gap between rich and poor is still very wide today, may face similar problems in the future.

The Kowloon Walled City is a good example of how geographical conditions and cultural factors interact to produce an urban phenomenon that is a result of socio-political abandonment and human determination. To summarize, this research adopted the cultural geographical perspective, and has demonstrated how lack of governance and jurisdictional certainty during British colonialism led to the emergence of the Walled City as a highly populated and juridical location. This study used concepts of place, landscape, and social practice concepts to analyze the case of KWC as territory of lawlessness and people’s adjustment.

Giddens theory of Structuration theory, helped to build on arguments and provided an understanding of how people and communities navigated around structural factors like legal ambiguity and and resource scarcity (land) to shape their living environment. This framework pointed to the subjugation of the Walled City’s inhabitants and their innovative ways of coping with the lack of governance, informal social structures and the use of the vertical space in their buildings.

Therefore, the Walled City shows that only proper urban management and appropriate policies can counter socio-economic injustice. The example expresses the fact that modern cities can deal with informal settlements and build resilience in vulnerable populations. In conclusion, the study links past evidence to current issues situated in urban settings, thereby making a significant input into the understanding of how cultural and geographical factors deeply could influence the lives of people in cities nowadays. Furthermore, his essay has demonstrated that physical environments, structures and governance can play both as a role of constraint or an enabler. Thus, future urban planning policies should be taken into account for learning from such examples, addressing socio-economic inequalities and ensuring that marginalized populations are not left into unregulated spaces.

Benoit, M. (2023). The lasting legacy of Hong Kong Kowloon Walled City. Retrieved from https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-lasting-legacy-of-hong-kongs-kowloon-walled-city (Accessed on November 22, 2024)

Crawfold, J. (2023). The strange saga of Kowloon Walled City. Anarchic, organic, surreal, this enclave was once among the most densely populated places on Earth. Retrieved from https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city (Accessed November 19, 2024)

Fraser, A., & Li, E. C. Y. (2017). The second life of Kowloon Walled City: Crime, media and cultural memory. Crime, Media, Culture, 13(2), 217-234. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1741659017703681

Giddens, A. “Living in the World: dilemmas of the self,” from Anthony Giddens. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford, Stanford University Press, pp. 187-201. Available at https://uregina.ca/~gingrich/319m606.htm

Gong, Z., Zhang, Z., Zhou, J., Zhou, J., & Wang, W. (2022). The evolutionary process and mechanism of cultural landscapes: an integrated perspective of landscape ecology and evolutionary economic geography. Land, 11(11), 2062.

Gottwald, S., Albert, C., & Fagerholm, N. (2022). Combining sense of place theory with the ecosystem services concept: empirical insights and reflections from a participatory mapping study. Landscape Ecology, 1-23. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-021-01362-z

Taylor, P. J. (2014). The value of a geographical perspective. In The Future of Geography (RLE Social & Cultural Geography) 1st ed, pp. 92-110. London: Routledge.

Wikipedia contributors. (2024, November 17). Kowloon Walled City. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from  https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kowloon_Walled_City&oldid=1258029621 (Accessed November 19, 2024)