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The Most Densely Populated Place On Earth
A recent story about Kowloon Walled City, which was demolished in 1993, provides remarkable photographs of an architectural "mashup".
With 33,000 people and a number of businesses residing in about several hundred interconnected buildings on 6.5 acres, the entire structure was completed without any input from architects.
(Kowloon Walled City)
Kowloon Walled City was a legal no-man's-land, outside the strict regulations that governed the rest of Hong Kong. During some parts of its existence, it was ruled by warlords or rival gangs.
(Kowloon Walled City at night)
Although it doesn't count as a science fiction prediction, it's a weekend story I can't resist. I'm sure fans of Frank Herbert will be thinking of his 1977 novel The Dosadi Experiment. In the story, a planet is set up as an experiment by the frog-like Gowachin. On the planet, only one city was allowed: Chu, which sat on an island in a poisonous river:
Chu stood alone - almost twenty kilometers wide and forty long, built on hills and silted islands where the river slowed in its deep canyon..."...Some ninety million people live there, almost equally divided between the two species [human and Gowachin]. Chu is approximately eight hundred square kilometers."
The population density shocked McKie...
The Warrens, the most densely populated part of Chu, could have been modeled on Kowloon Walled City. All of the buildings were interconnected, with minimum width tunnels and hallways providing access.
See more photographs from this unique world at the Daily Mail.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/6/2012)
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