[JKCalhoun]

I am not sure why I am continually fascinated by this place.

I suppose, having written the old Mac computer game Glider, it might be obvious why I am drawn to it since it kind of looks like an insanely large "house" that someone might have created for the game.

On the other hand I feel like I have had dreams in spaces that I imagine are like this — and I feel like these dreams may have pre-dated the game I wrote?

Or maybe it's a kind of Blade Runner vibe of the future that the city gives off — or like the early police chase scene in Chung King Express ... [1]

I imagine it as having both good and bad qualities. I imagine crime is always present — but that too exploration is always there too. A younger me would have loved to try to get lost, try to find my way home.

[1] https://youtu.be/0uMekCFDnkI

[jl6]

It’s the sci-fi death star cyberpunk dystopia aesthetic. The place was demolished before most of us ever heard about it, and yet we feel like we’ve been there, crawling through its air ducts, picking up a health boost at its meat markets, buying ammo from its shady traders, escaping from the cops through its windows, getting an achievement for doing it all without injuring the civilians…

By the way, 8 year old me loved Glider! Nice work.

[creer]

"Death star"?! To me that evokes "designed", "manufactured" and "no need to think too much about human scale". See Seattle Central Public Library - especially at night when it's open to interstellar space.

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5749/23487975024_13a1504a6b_c...

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1584/24008226682_5f6c6d1f6c_c...

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1570/23820565720_559b380eb2_c...

("Stormtrooper!")

As opposed to cyberpunk, because yes on that: spend money on wiring, computers and noodles, not on wall paint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmqlxjTSc8w

[jl6]

True. I guess the “Death Star” aspect came to me in the sense of dense construction in all directions around; a place where flat maps may fail you.

[creer]

There was a subway station in Paris - Etoile I think - that was like that: No need of 90 degree angles, stairs here and there in unpredictable locations, and colorful and brightly lit underground "strip mall". A bowling alley or something. Most subway stations are mostly corridors populated only with people and wall poster advertising, while that one because it had a bunch of stores and other venues, felt so much larger and confusing from a navigation point of view.

Some glimpses of it in the movie Subway I think? It's not the main station in that movie, which is Chatelet Les Halles - vast spaces where it's hard to keep track of orientation yes, but seemingly very simple vertically: flat. Which is misleading: most Paris subway stations are complex vertically because of the need to straddle and connect different sides of rail tracks crossing at different levels, while leaving intact different sides of other tunnels, sewers, etc.

[creer]

Here are some 3D models of Paris subway stations that illustrate that:

First how people think of subway stations: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/illustration-o...

And then how they are. Except these diagrams do not show the businesses...

https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/v6v4no/3...

https://preview.redd.it/axr7x8yi9x391.png?width=960&crop=sma...

https://old.reddit.com/r/InfrastructurePorn/comments/v6axqk/...

https://old.reddit.com/r/transit/comments/1aw7ht7/why_are_so...

[creer]

Okay. It's interesting that most of the Death Star's interior views failed on that. Yes a droid is useful to make sense of the plans but most of it seems... flat floors and vertical elevators and "vertical" shafts.

Even the Seattle Central Public Library - a real building - did it better, with tilted multi-floor window planes, escalators, multi-floor corkscrew walking path with numbering on the floor, unexpected openings overlooking big open spaces, etc.

[ClassyJacket]

"I am not sure why I am continually fascinated by this place."

If you're into technology - like anyone on Hacker News - you're probably fascinated by seeing high complexity in a small space. That's one of the things about tech that makes it exciting to me. Look at my smartwatch - so much complexity crammed into something so small. Such high entropy. It's just fundamentally interesting because there's so much there.

I know it was no treat for the people that lived there, tho. Conditions sucked.

(Bit of a tangent, but I also wonder if there's a link between this and my (very bad) social media addiction. There's just so much stuff to look at on a place like reddit or tiktok. Such high information density.)

This diagram sort of reminds me of playing Sim Tower, or those books of cross sections of things that were popular entertainment when I was a kid. I guess they hit the same part of the brain.

[martiancookbook]

Maybe it's non-normative ways of living? In many places, people are not allowed to live in whichever way they please - there are rules and regulations, mostly in the name of safety (from crime, fire/flood, infection, etc).

Kowloon seems to exist outside/before these restrictions, and might therefore feel more "free" in some way. It might also be why fantasy/science fiction fantasy tends to take place in a slightly more "lawless" and uninhibited world.

[cortesoft]

> Kowloon seems to exist outside/before these restrictions, and might therefore feel more "free" in some way.

I doubt most of the people who lived there felt that way. There were rules enforced by the powerful people living there, it just wasn’t enforced formally via laws. Instead, strongmen imposed their own rules.

[bluGill]

sort of - most of the people there also didn't have good options to leave. I suspect most would leave if given a better option. Note however that better option needs to somehow include your friends and family.

[martiancookbook]

Agreed! Fantasy tends to assume your basic needs are satisfied, especially the unsexy ones. E.g. you rarely see someone use the restroom in space, and I bet that the “fantastical” nature of Kowloon is interrupted in reality by waste management

When I say “free” and “uninhibited”, I am talking only about the mind playing with fantasy, not the actual lived experience of residents

[wkat4242]

> I bet that the “fantastical” nature of Kowloon is interrupted in reality by waste management

And the resulting pest presence yes. Yuck :)

[5040]

Many did not want to leave, for want of having better options. The dentists were especially attached to the place.

>Medical and dental care were no problem at all: many of the residents were doctors and dentists with Chinese qualifications and years of experience but lacking the expensive pieces of paper required to practise in the colony. They set up their neat little clinics in the City, oases of cleanliness and order, and charged their patients a fraction of what they would pay outside.

Source: City Of Darkness: Life In Kowloon Walled City (1993)

[thworp]

It‘s because to the domesticated observer, the walled city symbolizes an idealized vision of chaos. A place you could have inhabited where you would finally be free from the dictates of society. The ideal space of opportunity where you could have forged your own path, the realities of KWC be damned.

In the same way that people living in Chaos yearn for a Franco or an old King because they symbolize order, regardless of the realities of their reign. Just a projection space that is sufficiently ill-defined that it becomes a canvas.

[kiba]

I think of kowloon as a preview to the hyperdense cities of the future in a way. Acrologies would be a more workable vision of hyperdense cities, as you also need green spaces rather than just a bigger version of dense concrete jungles that is defacto state of many cities.

Right now, space is criminally underused in cities or allocated so inefficiently that we don't really need acrologies yet. We can get more green in cities and making these places more pleasant and human space to live.

[kibwen]

"Dense" cities are necessary for achieving the efficiencies of density, but "hyperdense" cities are not. You can have a city where all residential buildings are five- to six-stories, with ample green spaces and every street lined with trees; that would be a dense city, despite being less dense than Manhattan.

I don't foresee a future where any city feels the desire to model itself after the Kowloon Walled City in terms of density, because in order for that to happen it would have to imply that physical space itself is the bottleneck for the population, rather than things like the availability of energy/food/water (which was true for the KWC for historical/political reasons).

[bergie]

> You can have a city where all residential buildings are five- to six-stories, with ample green spaces and every street lined with trees;

So, essentially Berlin inside the ring. Each "kiez" (a neighbourhood) is sort of a village of its own.

[KMag]

Note that the walled city is just a small part of Kowloon district. The famous Kai Tak Airport was also in Kowloon (now converted into an event space), where airliners flew scarily close to buildings on final approach.

I lived in Hong Kong just under 10 years, and a friend of a friend grew up in the walled city.

[wkat4242]

And the walled city is long gone :'( There's just a little museum left of it.

As far as I understand this happened even before the handover.

[jprete]

According to Wikipedia, China actually handed over sovereignty of Kowloon to the British to facilitate demolishing it. They must have really hated the place.

[6510]

It to me feels more like generation space ships.

The more interesting question is why so many people feel this place in the first place. Why this puzzling fascination? I don't have this with any other place.

Why do the pictures feel like home?

While I shouldn't, I remember it as people struggling to make ends meet but also as an incredibly happy place because of the tightly knitted social fabric. The need to help others and the need to be helped creates top notch relationships.

[treprinum]

You mean hyperdense as in Chongqing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJOJGT00TlU

[bitwize]

It's basically the inspo for every cyberpunk dystopia ever from Blade Runner on forwards. Right down to the black markets, prostitutes, drugs, unlicensed doctors and dentists plying their trades, etc.

Most recently, the setting of the video game Stray is basically Kowloon with the serial numbers filed off.

[KMag]

Not just the Kowloon Walled City, but other locations in Hong Kong inspire lots of cyberpunk scenes. After living in Hong Kong for a few years, I re-watched Ghost in the Shell and was surprised to recognize the final scene as taking place under the circular pedestrian overpass on Queens Road, just east of Victoria Park.

[satvikpendem]

Sadly all the neon (and other noble gas installations) in Hong Kong and elsewhere is going away. It is sometimes but not always replaced by LED which doesn't necessarily give that same aesthetic.

[creer]

And one thing that was great in Blade Runner was to recognize "the tyrrany of weather". Instead of erasing that from their source material. Because many Los Angeles concept teams might not even understand that. The designers cherished it and made us of it, for lighting, for mood, for how the business stalls might be set up. Still great to this day.

[mbrubeck]

> I am not sure why I am continually fascinated by this place.

Nominative determinism?

[JKCalhoun]

Thanks for the new word (phrase), ha ha.

[fuelfive]

Thanks for writing Glider! I adored that game as a kid and was part of how the possibilities of computing began to captivate my attention.

[JKCalhoun]

Make no mistake, there were others (for starters, whoever wrote the TRS-80 version of "Trek") that had first inspired me.

[wkat4242]

I think it's because it's inspired so much fiction. Blade runner, there's references to it in Ghost in the Shell, in the game Stray, and many others. Many people are fascinated by it.

[adolph]

Yes, I’m rereading Young Lady’s Primer right now and although Dr. X’s lair is far northward, my mind’s eye sees Kowloon photos tinted by Kar-wai and Doyle’s works.

[nxobject]

Nothing can beat a Glider PRO house in terms of surrealism and trickery, though! And cozy charm. In fact, I think it's time I downloaded a copy of SheepShaver and reinstalled it – and all the extra houses...

[readingnews]

Wow, how much fun times my friends and I had with Glider. We probably could not possibly thank you enough for making something that caused us to spend so much time together. If only I had more rubber bands...

[JKCalhoun]

No need to thank me. I enjoyed writing it. When I first wrote it it was both a personal challenge (to write a game) and also kind of fun for me to play as well.

[michaelcampbell]

I share your fascination and perhaps from the same genome; I haven't figured out what yet, but I've always thought some MMORPG game based on the city would be spectacular.

[k12sosse]

It's where the kumite was held.

https://youtu.be/smGHdOU4Qu4

[MontagFTB]

Thank you for Glider! I enjoyed it immensely as a kid.

[nreilly]

Thank you for glider!