Talk:Kowloon Walled City

message: "Also, as the Walled City was beginning to be torn down, a group of Japanese explorers took about a week to tour the empty walled city, making a sort of map and a cross section of the city"
Interesting bit of information with no online source to validate or confirm. Would someone mind posting a link to this reference? This statement just hangs there... Not saying to remove it, just support it.
:Accidently found it http://web.archive.org/web/20020208225753/www.flex.co.jp/kowloon/story/index_e.html Now would someone mind adding the citation?
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I agree with the first comment.  Referring to this as "Kowloon" for the article is a bad idea... why not Walled City?
:The first comment is here in the hope that a knowlegeable person will make the relevant changes in the article. olivier 13:47 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)
:OK, tried my first attempt to consolidate everything.  Did it traditional inverted pyramid style -- try to give big picture first and go more specific. Feel free to clean up and clarify.  (Fuzheado)
This is a new comment and I'm not totally sure that this is the correct way to do this but oh well.  The walled city was documented before it was torn down.  A book was published entitled "City of Darkness, Life in Kowloon Walled City."  It's available on Amazon.com and it runs around $85.  It's expensive, but if you're interested in urban culture and architecture it's fascinating.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.21.97.102 (talk) 03:53, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Validating Information 

message: I'm gonna get a screenshot of this as soon as I find the episode of where it's at, but if anyone can help me out on this - In Ghost In the Shell : SAC 2nd GiG, when Hideo Kuze talks about his revolution and a new society, there is a scene which is basically identical to this one >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:KowloonWalledCityAlley2.jpg
In fact, I think that the whole refuge district concept is very similar to this. Rokasomee 08:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: got it. http://www.fileden.com/files/10493/combo1.png >>> a screenshot of the refugee district Rokasomee 10:09, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Depictions in Popular Culture

message: I swear i've read the text somewhere... and it's not on wikipedia. What caught my attention is the style. 
:... 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. Labyrinthine corridors ran through the monolith, some of those being former streets (at the ground level, and often clogged up with trash), and some of those running through upper floors, practically between buildings. The only rules of construction were twofold: electricity had to be provided to avoid fire, and the buildings could be no more than about fourteen stories high (because of the nearby airport). A mere eight municipal pipes somehow provided water to the entire structure (although more could have come from wells). By the early 1980s, Kowloon Walled City 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 too much - despite the low crime, for 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.
Here I've highlighted some perculiar use of description and structures that are not very scientific and encyclopedic. POV? I will fix up some of the punctuation in the meantime. --Kvasir 23:04, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have placed a copyright violation tag. Some sections appeared to be lifted word for word from this paper. See page 131. --Kvasir (talk) 22:16, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm pretty sure that this site copied from Wikipedia, not the other way around. This paper is dated 2005, while large parts of the article already existed in 2004. See . I don't think that this is a copyvio. Andrew_pmk | Talk 04:20, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Is this settled?  I'm going to remove the tag for now, it's really distracting and it doesn't seem like there's any evidence that this article is a copyvio.  Putting that tag on an article without specifying what source it's copied from is really bad form.P4k (talk) 04:29, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questionable copyvio? 

message: Is this the same city as Ryo visits in Shenmue 2, called Kowloon? If it is, maybe information on differences btw Kowloon in the game vs Kowloon in real life could be added? --Konstantin 12:23, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I just read this article and the similarity occured to me. This might go under a "trivia" section. Shawnc 03:40, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

text: The city in Shenmue 2 is most definitely the Kowloon Walled City. --Golbez 03:45, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shenmue 2 

message: The intro previously called Kowloon an exclave, but it also said it is located "in the middle" of Hong Kong. I'm pretty sure it can't be both. An exclave, by definition, must not be entirely contained within the larger state. If it's completely surrounded by one state (such as Hong Kong) then it is an enclave. List of enclaves and exclaves has it as an enclave, and assuming the "in the middle of Hong Kong" part is true, I believe that's the correct classification. Kafziel Complaint Department 07:19, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Exclave vs. enclave

message: Just posting here as a heads up that I'm currently doing a fair amount of work on this article. At the moment City of Darkness is listed just as a general reference, so I'm not sure what statements use it as their source. I will be reading through that book and adding inline citations where applicable. I am also compiling some possible quotes that could be used in the article. If anyone can provide additional good images, or reliable sources for unsourced statements in the article, that would be very helpful. —tktktk 03:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Having looked over various population estimates, I've seen a few sources claim that 50,000 people lived in KWC at one point. However, given that (according to City of Darkness) the population was about 10,000 in 1971 and about 33,000 in 1987 based on government surveys, this seems doubtful. It may well be that people took the highest estimate that anyone had come up with and ran with it. If anyone can provide a solid, reliable source for the claim, though, I'd be quite happy to be proven wrong. —tktktk 21:57, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

text: I am also removing (after searching for sources) examples in the "Cultural depictions" section that do not explicitly reference KWC. A "Walled City" is a generic term that could mean any city with walls, and "Kowloon" is the general area in which KWC is located. Neither term on its own can be definitively said to be referencing KWC. Of course, if a reliable source can be found for anything I've removed, please do add it back. —tktktk 22:37, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

text: I've removed two of the images that are copies of the photos in City of Darkness, and put them up for deletion on Commons. It's really unfortunate (aereakowloon.jpg in particular was amazing), but copyright violations do need to be dealt with. I replaced them with another image and a quote from City of Darkness that gives a wonderfully vivid description of life in KWC circa the 1970s. —tktktk 03:04, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Under construction... 

message: Doing informal calculations, I found population densities of cruise ships such as the Carnival Triumph, etc., to be something like 1200/acre (although such densities could well be more)(note: the unusual footprint of a ship makes it hard to calculate density per square foot of "land", given the bulletlike floorplan of a ship's hull and varying floorplan of its superstructure.) Kowloon Walled City clocked in at over 5000 people/acre, which is a lot. The population density of a Boeing 737-300 approaches that of KWC (4 964.93649 people/acre), but that population is all on the same floor on an airplane, whereas multistory buildings made up KWC. 192.12.88.7 (talk) 07:46, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Going with the population of 33,000 and the area of .01 sq mi, the desity would be 3,300,000 per sq mi. Daniel Christensen (talk) 12:34, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Interestingly enough

message: Kowloon Walled City was also widely known as "Hak Nam", Cantonese for "City of Darkness", I am told.  Could someone add this to the article?  I would, but I don't know where would be best, nor what hanzi should accompany the term.
(And ideally a Hongkong-ese person could please add whether Hak Nam was a matter-of-fact name, or something deeply disparaging?  I think you'd have to be from around there to know.) Sean M. Burke (talk) 13:35, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Hak Nam" 

message: Though the article mentions it is used as the setting for certain missions from the Hitman video-game series, it is not actually the case. No mission from the game takes place within the Walled City itself. The larger city of Kowloon is used however. I may be wrong on this but I remember the series well and cannot recall any overt reference or depiction of the Walled City. 
70.180.248.94 (talk) 03:45, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  In the Hitman series 

message: Overlaying the 1915 map on Google Earth imagery puts the "Chinese Town" shown in that map about half mile SE (22.3283 N, 114.19454 E) of the location given in the article (22.33228 N, 114.18866 E) and in what later became part of the airport.  The possibilities are: (1) The map is distorted and wrong, (2) The "Chinese Town" shown in the map is not the walled city which would be outside the area of this map, (3) The location given by the article is wrong, (4) I have made a mistake somewhere. All seem unlikely but what is the explanation?  Other maps of the late 19th or early 20th century could shed some light. GS3 (talk) 11:59, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The location you got from overlaying the map (22.3283 N, 114.19454 E) is roughly in the middle of the Lung Tsun Stone Bridge, which was the pier used for accessing Kowloon City aka. the "Chinese Town". You can see it very clearly with the satellite view of Google Maps, including the excavated remnants of the bridge. You can find additional old maps and a lot of information by browsing the references and external links of the Lung Tsun Stone Bridge article. It is very possible that the two different location data simply point to two opposite ends of the Kowloon City, which was fairly large.  Underwaterbuffalo (talk) 13:02, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: After more investigation it seems clear that the four corners were roughly located at (22.33112, 114.18959), (22.33225, 114.18893), (22.33319, 114.19087), (22.33201, 114.19152) and so the center was at about (22.33214, 114.19023), where the remains of the yamen are still today. I have corrected the coordinates in the article accordingly even though the change is very small. Still, overlaying the 1915 map in Google Earth puts the city itself out where the airport end was. Not the bridge but the city itself. Not a big deal because the map might be slightly distorted and it might show as built city areas which were deemed to belong to the city but were open.GS3 (talk) 16:17, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

text: Coordinates are given at the top of the page. You can click on them and view the location on Google Maps. Seems quite modern world to me. In case this is not enough, the article mentions "The area where the Walled City once stood is now Kowloon Walled City Park", which in fact means that there is nothing really notable in the vicinity. So interested readers will better go off-page to figure out the location, I believe. Underwaterbuffalo (talk) 20:34, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Location, location, location! 

message: Thanks to  for nominating this as a GA, and  for reviewing. There was some uncertainty about the meaning of the statistic "Because apartments were so small — about 60% were " so it was taken out. Here's the original quote, which is talking about compensation for moving residents out pre-demolition:
:"The final formula tied compensation to bringing the cheapest HOS [Home Ownership Scheme] flat within reach of the owner-occupier. Based on a unit size of 23 square metres, the size of some 60 per cent of all flats in the City, owners in the first phases were to be given $320,000[.]"
It seems pretty clear to me from "unit size" that the author is saying those flats are exactly 23 m², rather than "up to" 23 m². I've re-added the statistic (and clarified the wording to say "about 60% had a unit size of "), as I think it helps readers to better visualize just how small many of the flats were. If anyone takes issue with that interpretation, let me know. —tktktk 05:04, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi there. I found this, which suggests that the flats were "approximately 23 m²", not exactly. Might be a useful ref to add as it's quite detailed. Best, ► Philg88 ◄ ♦talk 05:27, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep, no worries. "Based off" indicates that they took an average size. I would be extremely surprised based on the hodge-podge housing and notorious lack of law-and-order if the units all turned out to be exactly the same size. --LT910001 (talk) 10:31, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: , unfortunately the paragraph you're referring to actually looks like it's describing the New Territories in general. , you may be right about them taking an average size. I've changed the article to say "a typical unit was ", since that would be accurate in either case. —tktktk 17:35, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  Indeed. Looks good. ► Philg88 ◄ ♦talk 17:45, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

text: Nice! Should have pinged you before removing that, but glad we got it back in. Thanks :) — MusikAnimal talk 14:55, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flat unit size 

message: There's some good information in this interactive webpage from WSJ http://projects.wsj.com/kwc/ including interviews with the residents, a virtual tour, newspaper clippings of the years before its destruction, and a discussion on its cultural legacy. I think some of the stuff from there can be added into this page; and if not, they're interesting nonetheless! _dk (talk) 10:03, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wall Street Journal project 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 10 external links on Kowloon Walled City. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I know Wikipedia is an encylopedia but I still want to propose the following even though allready taken out because of WP:OR:
"Given the vertical scale and block shape of the settlement provides a basis to calculate an uncommon volumetric population density of roughly 400,000 per cubic hectare, at an average hight of 30m." Nsae Comp (talk) 00:33, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Volumetric density 

message: Aren't there any other literary depictions of KWC outside a single website? That seems strange, to say the least. I can't work on it right now, but at the very least almost the entirety of Cyberpunk literary genre contains references or inspirations drawn from KWC, and it does appear in some of Gibson's books.
Forgot to sign... Monteparnas (talk) 14:05, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Depictions in literature 

message: So, I really don't know what to do with this information, since it is certainly WP:OR rather than WP:RS, but, having looked at a lot of photos of the enclave over the years and looking at the size we currently state for it...I mean that's just clearly much more than 6.4 acres, right? I've looked for alternate figures for a bit now, but the problem is that the bulk of the media content about the enclave now consists of media articles that postdate this article, so there may be an element of WP:CIRCULAR at work here, but that too is speculation.  In truth, I haven't done a deep dive on the research looking for older figures or the original secondary or primary source from which the current one originates, let alone attempting a systematic/technical approach measuring the footprint using historical data or metrics of the current park from contemporary maps (which would also be OR in any event).  I'm still going to try it before long (if only to try to resolve the doubt) but it might take me a little longer than someone else with a more robust skillset for such things, so I thought I'd start by sharing my impressionistic reaction here.  It's possible I'm falling prey to some forced perspective effects, but I really think that's significantly more than 6.4 acres. SnowRise let's rap 04:37, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  : The size does seem remarkable, but it is sourced to a journal article from 1987 which states the same figure (or 6.5 at least) ... that doesn't mean that the current source is necessarily correct of course - best way to change it would be to find a reliable source saying something else. Mujinga (talk) 13:38, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The figure has to be wrong. 6.4 acres is the area of two or three houses on my street. The picture clearly shows more than that. Richferrara (talk) 15:04, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'd guess it's more like 25 acres. Seems like there's consensus it's wrong so maybe it's best just to remove the figure. Hopefully eventually someone can find a better source. Mujinga (talk) 08:22, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

text: Seems okay. 6.4 acres is the rough area of 5 American Football fields or just less than 2 Manhattan standard city blocks. That's a lot of area to have this kind of structure on and seems reasonable to me. Buildings and structures tend to have a lower area footprint than people think. Remember it is very dense. Looking at the park that covers the area and using the measure tool in Google Maps it comes to about 200m by 130m which does indeed calculate to 6.4 acres. Canterbury Tail talk 09:01, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh that's a clever method! I was taking the the little pitches to the right of the city in the article pic as one football pitch and guesstimating from there, now I see on gmaps that they are practice pitches (and below them is a full-size pitch) so I would downscale my estimate back down to around 6.5. Cheers, Mujinga (talk) 09:46, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

text: Ah, well, I guess that's the best measure we have in the circumstances, with a more precise survey impossible without some extra records--and certainly more than I thought to do. If the math adds up, that's good enough for me, though I still say that looks more like 12-15 acres to my (not entirely untrained) eye.  But again, with the perspective utilized with the wide shot images, combined with intuitive assumptions about the size of the structures that may not be entirely accurate, and so forth, I can see how it may very well be just 6.2-6.7 acres (depending on the source: I did see some minor discrepancies in how we quoted the particular sources which I should go back and change now, so some small benefit comes of my little exercise here).  In any event, I appreciate the indulgence folks.  SnowRise let's rap 17:44, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh no worries. Always nice to have a civilized discussion this stuff. And I was curious enough myself to want to do the math. Canterbury Tail talk 01:32, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Size of the enclave

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thread_title:  Featured picture scheduled for POTD 

message: What is Air rights according to Wikipedia definition? --95.24.66.215 (talk) 10:04, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Why does that matter to anything, Wikipedia is not a reliable source. We go by what the reliable source in the articles say. Anyway this is about an illegal set of structures, disregard is more likely the correct term than an overuse of rights (since they weren't legally applying for or using any of them.) Canterbury Tail talk 12:31, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  In that case the link should not lead to the Air rights article in Wikipedia. --95.24.66.215 (talk) 10:35, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no better article to link to. If a right is disregarded or violated it does not mean that it no longer exists. Sjö (talk) 10:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

text: And I have to ask you the same thing that I asked at Talk:Ethnic groups in Finland: where are you going with this? Do you propose a change in the article or is this a forum-like discussion where you just want to vent your views? Sjö (talk) 13:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Air rights]]