Wow, coolest thing I’ve seen while doom scrolling this week. I wonder how accurate that is. It must be an especially dense cross section, because it doesn’t leave much room for hallways or other non living space.
Also was hoping to see more of the structural elements… that drawing really makes it feel like the entire thing is made of cardboard, hopes and dreams.
> that drawing really makes it feel like the entire thing is made of cardboard, hopes and dreams.
In the same way that corrugation gives strength to cardboard, it's possible that the city could have been so dense that it may have been relatively resistant to collapsing.
Very very sad about cohost closing btw. It was really the only "post twitter acquisition" social network that spoke to me. It felt very late 2000' in the best ways.
I feel like Kowloon is a decent metaphor for software design at most typical large SaaS companies: small changes accreted over time that lead to an impenetrable, wandering structure that only the residents (developers) truly understand.
It's a fascinating comparison—I've seen this happen at companies too. Makes you wonder if imposing something akin to building codes for software development could prevent this kind of sprawling complexity.
i've never seen coding standards properly enforced on any large project, nobody has time to read through and scrutinize 30 files of code every time somebody creates a new feature when everybody has their own work to be doing too. at my last job we had mandatory code reviews and some days half of the entire day was just doing that. it didn't long before reading turned into skimming and skimming just turned into clicking approve.
I was thinking less about self-imposed code reviews and more about regulatory frameworks—principles borrowed from architecture and construction, like mandated documentation, reviews, and inspections.
There's some precedent for this: software in medical devices face strict regulations after incidents like Therac-25.
While most software might not carry the same life-or-death risks, data breaches are increasing in frequency and impact. We should at least be thinking about how we can improve our processes as an industry.
Sadly I have to agree. It has to be mechanically enforced or it doesn't actually last, even with good intentions. (Or a BDFL, but those have scaling limits and Life™ stuff)
Which is a shame because I'm pretty convinced that slowing down and having time to do those reviews is net-good in the (not-very-)long run. Much of the space (and bugs) in even a very well run large project are from accumulating gaps until nobody knows how things truly work - it takes time to eliminate them and end up in a simpler, smaller, more sustainable state.
The problem isn't that we fail to apply the same rules for software development in safety-critical and non-safety-critical contexts. The problem is that we do apply the same software in both contexts.
Gatekeeping the entire industry isn't the answer unless you want to cripple it... but if someone wanted to issue regulations along the lines of "Don't steer your nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a Windows app," I wouldn't object to that.
I feel like like that recently. Just examining an app that was largely written in isolation and ... I just discovered a new auth endpoint / service that nobody knew we had, and it does not behave logically. It has all sorts of limits that impedes testing / troubleshooting.
Pain ...
For the record I am going to eventually direct this app to the "normal" auth service and fix it all up, but man why is it this way???
I think this applies to anything that is created over more than a single generation. Basically anything the government touches eventually goes this way too.
KWC is a pretty fascinating place, but all I've ever seen about it is from people on the outside looking in. Are there any accounts from the people who lived there?
> What remains unclear is why there was such little protest over its demolition
Why would there be? This seems like one of those "people living in squalor is their right!" statements by people on the outside that want to visit a human zoo. I suspect no one that was living there would choose to go back if it still existed. My friends from there certainly don't. They might have a few fond memories but so do war veterans.
That's actually not true at all. According to interviews a lot of people actually miss it. I believe it was a German documentary that I first heard it in. I'm kind of obsessed with this place and even created a game around the premise of a walled city.
Especially if they are older. I'm in a suburban / rural border area and there are lots of older folks who just want to spend their days at home. But the area is changing, people around them are selling and that means change.
The interesting dynamic is that most have enough land to sell for a very pretty penny and they could build a great place further out, far better than they have now, but rather they value the comfort and familiarity of home, and I get that too.
Anyone remotely interested in Hong Kong should read the novel Tai-Pan. That’s some great historical fiction. No idea which parts are accurate, but it’s a fun read.
The recent Shōgun series was surprisingly good, I really enjoyed it.
Clavell famously has no idea how to end a book - they pretty much _all_ have a deus ex machina in the form of a natural disaster - but they are excellent & fun reads of the days & weeks leading up to it.
A bit unrelated, but since people with Hong Kong knowledge may be reading: How are the Chungking Mansions doing? The atmosphere there was sometimes compared to Kowloon Walled City, and I remember when my roommate stayed there in the 90s he reported that from his window that faced the inner courtyard he could not see the ground, just darkness. Also, it was reported to have rats as big as cats and cockroaches as big as rats (I hope jokingly).
I have stayed there for 2 weeks last month. It is indeed a distinctive experience. I managed to rent the smallest apartment I have ever been to. When I entered the room I burst out laughing at its size. There was basically nothing but a small bed and a toilet/bathroom where you could have showering while sitting on a toilet. It was definitely a memorable feeling to stay there. Every time you enter the building many (mainly Indian looking) man approach and try to sell you drugs, stolen stuff or prostitutes. I wandered quite a bit around because you always had to wait a lot for the elevator so I used the stairs to go to the 8th floor. There was piss and trash all over the stairs. At first day I was really close to changing my location but I eventually got used to the place. I have witnessed at least 3 fights during the 2 weeks staying there. On the last morning at 6 am when I arrived to the first floor after checking out I heard loud noises and when the elevator opened two guys fell inside fighting each other, accompanied by several woman shouting. I managed to step over them out of the elevator and left the building safely. It was chaotic to be honest. But at least I saw no bugs and rats. Overall I think it might have some resemblance to how it must have felt staying in the Walled City.
I've stayed there about half a year ago. [0] Pretty interesting place, although not nearly as dystopian as you describe it! No cockroaches or anything, but ground level is very noisy, and elevator queues are pretty bad.
[0]: If you want to give it a try, open up any hotel booking website and sort by price – pretty much anything under $25 is in the Mansions.
I've visited it earlier this year and it seems pretty unchanged ("cheap watches", "need tailor",...). I've stayed in one of the budget hostels there a few years ago, its was interesting but I'd probably not do it again. Waiting 15 minutes for one of the cramped elevators every time you go home gets old quickly.
A few months ago I had a long layover in Hong Kong, so I did a quick visit - it looked a bit emptyish, though there was still a bunch of budget hostels, food joints and some touting going on. The rats are pretty gigantic though.
I can understand why people are getting angry at the Internet Archive if they are offering one click downloads of books you can still buy on the (independent) artists website: https://cityofdarkness.co.uk/order-book/
Saying that as a donor to the Internet Archive as I support their "public web archiving" goal. This misleading "opensource" collection is full of software, books that are neither open source nor out of copyright: https://archive.org/details/opensource and their reporting tool doesn't even include "copyright infringement" as a reason.
I wish the people romanticizing or fetishizing Kowloon Walled City could have been forced to live there.
They remind me of the urban planners of the 50s and 60s who designed dense barren concrete monstrosities for the proles to live in as part of various urban renewal projects, from the comfort of their suburban garden estates.
I find it really draws my attention in a morbid sense associated to looking at what was a very alien way of living, but I would hate to live in those conditions.
Kowloon Walled City was very neat. If you want to get a feel for what it was like, there's a German language documentary from 1988 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9PZ05NLDww) that was filmed inside of it. This essay, however is pompous word salad of the worst type.
I am adding a blog post, shared on HN a couple months ago, that show an architectural cross section of the city.
https://cohost.org/belarius/post/6677850-architectural-cross
(I am not the author of the blog, nor the original poster, but I just want to share the link because I found this incredibly cool)
Wow, coolest thing I’ve seen while doom scrolling this week. I wonder how accurate that is. It must be an especially dense cross section, because it doesn’t leave much room for hallways or other non living space.
Also was hoping to see more of the structural elements… that drawing really makes it feel like the entire thing is made of cardboard, hopes and dreams.
> that drawing really makes it feel like the entire thing is made of cardboard, hopes and dreams.
In the same way that corrugation gives strength to cardboard, it's possible that the city could have been so dense that it may have been relatively resistant to collapsing.
Very very sad about cohost closing btw. It was really the only "post twitter acquisition" social network that spoke to me. It felt very late 2000' in the best ways.
That drawing is from a Japanese book on the subject. I bought it a while ago and although expensive, gave a really good glimpse into life in Kowloon. edit: should add a link to said book :https://www.amazon.com/Kowloon-large-illustrated-ISBN-400008...
I got this a while back & I think its worth it if you're interested in the subject. The book itself is large!
I feel like Kowloon is a decent metaphor for software design at most typical large SaaS companies: small changes accreted over time that lead to an impenetrable, wandering structure that only the residents (developers) truly understand.
“We build our computers the way we build our cities — over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.”
― Ellen Ullman, Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology
It's a fascinating comparison—I've seen this happen at companies too. Makes you wonder if imposing something akin to building codes for software development could prevent this kind of sprawling complexity.
i've never seen coding standards properly enforced on any large project, nobody has time to read through and scrutinize 30 files of code every time somebody creates a new feature when everybody has their own work to be doing too. at my last job we had mandatory code reviews and some days half of the entire day was just doing that. it didn't long before reading turned into skimming and skimming just turned into clicking approve.
I was thinking less about self-imposed code reviews and more about regulatory frameworks—principles borrowed from architecture and construction, like mandated documentation, reviews, and inspections.
There's some precedent for this: software in medical devices face strict regulations after incidents like Therac-25.
While most software might not carry the same life-or-death risks, data breaches are increasing in frequency and impact. We should at least be thinking about how we can improve our processes as an industry.
Sadly I have to agree. It has to be mechanically enforced or it doesn't actually last, even with good intentions. (Or a BDFL, but those have scaling limits and Life™ stuff)
Which is a shame because I'm pretty convinced that slowing down and having time to do those reviews is net-good in the (not-very-)long run. Much of the space (and bugs) in even a very well run large project are from accumulating gaps until nobody knows how things truly work - it takes time to eliminate them and end up in a simpler, smaller, more sustainable state.
Yes, it certainly would have prevented a lot of things, including the creation of the OS and software you used to suggest it.
Business moves faster than clean software architecture.
If there was 'code', arguably, nothing would be built in the first place.
Other industries innovate despite having to follow codes and industry standards. They just innovate slower.
Engineering standards are built on piles of corpses. We’re lucky that most of the growth of our industry has been in non-life-critical areas.
But regulation and standards are coming eventually - shoddy code will just have to kill a few thousand people first.
The problem isn't that we fail to apply the same rules for software development in safety-critical and non-safety-critical contexts. The problem is that we do apply the same software in both contexts.
Gatekeeping the entire industry isn't the answer unless you want to cripple it... but if someone wanted to issue regulations along the lines of "Don't steer your nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a Windows app," I wouldn't object to that.
I feel like like that recently. Just examining an app that was largely written in isolation and ... I just discovered a new auth endpoint / service that nobody knew we had, and it does not behave logically. It has all sorts of limits that impedes testing / troubleshooting.
Pain ...
For the record I am going to eventually direct this app to the "normal" auth service and fix it all up, but man why is it this way???
I think this applies to anything that is created over more than a single generation. Basically anything the government touches eventually goes this way too.
Is this a reference to the “I divorced my wife and this is what it taught me about B2B sales” joke?
KWC is a pretty fascinating place, but all I've ever seen about it is from people on the outside looking in. Are there any accounts from the people who lived there?
A few interviews in this video
https://youtu.be/g1wSj9X2igA?feature=shared
> What remains unclear is why there was such little protest over its demolition
Why would there be? This seems like one of those "people living in squalor is their right!" statements by people on the outside that want to visit a human zoo. I suspect no one that was living there would choose to go back if it still existed. My friends from there certainly don't. They might have a few fond memories but so do war veterans.
That's actually not true at all. According to interviews a lot of people actually miss it. I believe it was a German documentary that I first heard it in. I'm kind of obsessed with this place and even created a game around the premise of a walled city.
Some people actually refused to move out and had to be evicted.
People form emotional attachment to their home, even if the living conditions are bad.
Especially if they are older. I'm in a suburban / rural border area and there are lots of older folks who just want to spend their days at home. But the area is changing, people around them are selling and that means change.
The interesting dynamic is that most have enough land to sell for a very pretty penny and they could build a great place further out, far better than they have now, but rather they value the comfort and familiarity of home, and I get that too.
The pictures give you a Blade Runner feel
It's other way around - most of Cyberpunk aesthetic heavily inspired by Kowloon
Kowloon Walled City is a classic, almost trope-y, touchstone for cyberpunk aesthetics.
And rock music aesthetics.
https://theperpetualmotionmachine.bandcamp.com/album/gamblin...
I think this title might be just a little on the pretentious side.
Unbelievable that the place wasn't consumed by fire at some point.
Anyone remotely interested in Hong Kong should read the novel Tai-Pan. That’s some great historical fiction. No idea which parts are accurate, but it’s a fun read.
I finished the sequel of that book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_House_(novel)) this year, can also highly recommend it. The TV show looks cheap...but it actually aged really well and it has Pierce Brosnan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_House_(miniseries)). Can recommend it as well!
FX made what I thought was a pretty good adaptation of Shōgun. Am hoping they might turn their eyes to the rest of the "series", too.
The recent Shōgun series was surprisingly good, I really enjoyed it.
Clavell famously has no idea how to end a book - they pretty much _all_ have a deus ex machina in the form of a natural disaster - but they are excellent & fun reads of the days & weeks leading up to it.
ayeeya, cow chillo
There are Heterotopias in the US too. Some of the border regions in Southwest Texas intermittently occupied by cartels or smugglers come to mind.
A bit unrelated, but since people with Hong Kong knowledge may be reading: How are the Chungking Mansions doing? The atmosphere there was sometimes compared to Kowloon Walled City, and I remember when my roommate stayed there in the 90s he reported that from his window that faced the inner courtyard he could not see the ground, just darkness. Also, it was reported to have rats as big as cats and cockroaches as big as rats (I hope jokingly).
How is it doing now? Still as dystopian?
I have stayed there for 2 weeks last month. It is indeed a distinctive experience. I managed to rent the smallest apartment I have ever been to. When I entered the room I burst out laughing at its size. There was basically nothing but a small bed and a toilet/bathroom where you could have showering while sitting on a toilet. It was definitely a memorable feeling to stay there. Every time you enter the building many (mainly Indian looking) man approach and try to sell you drugs, stolen stuff or prostitutes. I wandered quite a bit around because you always had to wait a lot for the elevator so I used the stairs to go to the 8th floor. There was piss and trash all over the stairs. At first day I was really close to changing my location but I eventually got used to the place. I have witnessed at least 3 fights during the 2 weeks staying there. On the last morning at 6 am when I arrived to the first floor after checking out I heard loud noises and when the elevator opened two guys fell inside fighting each other, accompanied by several woman shouting. I managed to step over them out of the elevator and left the building safely. It was chaotic to be honest. But at least I saw no bugs and rats. Overall I think it might have some resemblance to how it must have felt staying in the Walled City.
What brought you there?
I stayed there about a year ago, and wrote a bit about it with some photos. Just search this page for "Chungking": https://dabreegster.github.io/prose/dec2023/pt1_hk.html
I've stayed there about half a year ago. [0] Pretty interesting place, although not nearly as dystopian as you describe it! No cockroaches or anything, but ground level is very noisy, and elevator queues are pretty bad.
[0]: If you want to give it a try, open up any hotel booking website and sort by price – pretty much anything under $25 is in the Mansions.
I've visited it earlier this year and it seems pretty unchanged ("cheap watches", "need tailor",...). I've stayed in one of the budget hostels there a few years ago, its was interesting but I'd probably not do it again. Waiting 15 minutes for one of the cramped elevators every time you go home gets old quickly.
A few months ago I had a long layover in Hong Kong, so I did a quick visit - it looked a bit emptyish, though there was still a bunch of budget hostels, food joints and some touting going on. The rats are pretty gigantic though.
William Gibson, Idoru. Heroine Chia Pet ends up (after some adventures, in cyberspace and meat) with place in the walled city. It's a good book.
Looks like that component that somehow works and nobody dares touch it.
Nice book on Kowloon with plenty of pictures: https://archive.org/details/city-of-darkness-life-in-kowloon...
I can understand why people are getting angry at the Internet Archive if they are offering one click downloads of books you can still buy on the (independent) artists website: https://cityofdarkness.co.uk/order-book/
Saying that as a donor to the Internet Archive as I support their "public web archiving" goal. This misleading "opensource" collection is full of software, books that are neither open source nor out of copyright: https://archive.org/details/opensource and their reporting tool doesn't even include "copyright infringement" as a reason.
I wish the people romanticizing or fetishizing Kowloon Walled City could have been forced to live there.
They remind me of the urban planners of the 50s and 60s who designed dense barren concrete monstrosities for the proles to live in as part of various urban renewal projects, from the comfort of their suburban garden estates.
Are people really romanticizing it out there?
I find it really draws my attention in a morbid sense associated to looking at what was a very alien way of living, but I would hate to live in those conditions.
Kowloon Walled City was very neat. If you want to get a feel for what it was like, there's a German language documentary from 1988 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9PZ05NLDww) that was filmed inside of it. This essay, however is pompous word salad of the worst type.
sorta mind blowing to look at what's there now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City_Park#/medi...
If you're interested in Kowloon, check out https://cityofdarkness.co.uk/
fascinating. It represents every failed public housing project in the U.S. as well, like the one in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyaanisqatsi#Filming and in NYC
I don't see much similarity. The KWC was an anarchic self-assembling place; that's about as libertarian as it gets.