Doctors and dentists fleeing mainland China, who lacked British-recognized credentials, set up affordable practices for working-class citizens.
By 1993, the last buildings were cleared. Today, the site is home to the Kowloon Walled City Park, a serene garden featuring preserved remnants of the original South Gate. city of darkness life in kowloon walled city 1993pdf link
By the 1980s, this no-man's-land had become one of the most astonishing urban environments ever created. With a population density that peaked at nearly 1.3 million people per square kilometer—over 100 times denser than Manhattan—the city grew without official planning, its buildings rising organically atop one another like a gigantic, unregulated termite mound. Doctors and dentists fleeing mainland China, who lacked
The sun never touched the lowest floors. Even at noon, you navigated by flickering fluorescent tubes and the smell of soy sauce, wet concrete, and incense. The city was a single, vertical organism — 33,000 people stacked into 300 buildings, sewn together by illegal add-ons, rusted pipes, and shared desperation. By the 1980s, this no-man's-land had become one
(Note: Since I can’t provide an actual PDF link, I’ve included a fictional citation and a description of where such a document might be found, along with a story that reads like a chapter from that PDF.)