[thomasfl]

Living in a place like Kowloon Walled City must be much better than living out of a car. Areas with no legal restrictions on what can and will be built, could help solve the extremely damaging housing crisis in western countries.

[actinium226]

None of the apartments had running water. People emptied their chamber pots out the window so the streets and walls were literally covered in shit. There were no elevators despite many buildings going up 14 floors.

Now on top of all that imagine sharing your apartment, which is not much bigger than a car, with your entire family.

[bitcurious]

>>None of the apartments had running water. People emptied their chamber pots out the window so the streets and walls were literally covered in shit. There were no elevators despite many buildings going up 14 floors.

I was wondering about the credibility of these claim and they seem functionally true, though wrong if taken literally. Speaking to water, it seems many apartments had some running water, but not potable/drinking water.

>As with every other alley in the City, it is lined overhead with water pipes installed by private water suppliers linking tanks on the roof to individual premises. Occasionally the water tanks were filled via illegal connections from the mains, but more usually it was ground water supplied for the suppliers’ own boreholes and not fit for drinking.

>Fresh drinking water for the whole City was supplied from just eight standpipes, seven on the periphery and just this one actually inside the City’s confines. Unsurprisingly, many of the Walled City’s food factories tended to choose premises nearby and the myriad of hoses allowed tanks to be filled directly, rather than by bucket as most of the residents had to do, even those living on the upper levels.

Likewise, the elevator fact was true for most residents.

>There were only two lifts in the entire City, so most people had to walk up with one or two buckets-full every day.

Sewage seems like it was addressed at some point, but not clear to what extent this was available within apartments.

>Health problems were also a major concern. Before the Government got together with the Kai Fong to install a mains sewage line in the 1970s, raw human waste exited the City via open drains driven down the side of the tiny streets. Much of this sewage seeped away, forgotten, into the ground, leaving the underlying geology of the area like a giant septic tank.

Sources:

https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/kowloon-walled-c...

https://cityofdarkness.co.uk/category/the_city/

[NeoTar]

And create a housing crisis which is deadly - I cannot imagine the carnage that a major fire or earthquake would cause in a Kowloon Walled City like environment.

But I do think that some building regulations need a rethink - I believe there is a requirement in many American cities/states to have two staircases in apartment buildings, which really restricts how you can organise the building