this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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Idk, seemed like any other terribly planned and poverty stricken cramped urban neighborhood from Chinese history. Keeping them around isn't such a great look, the same way one wouldn't want to "preserve" the slums and favelas elsewhere in the third world.
This is a gross misrepresentation of Kowloon. It wasn't just a slum. It was a study on how people exist when the primary limit is ground space. It was a unique place formed under conditions that will likely not be expressed again.
It might not "look good" but neither do the pyramids when you consider that they were built with slave labor, for despotic monarchs who deluded themselves in believing they could rise from the dead.
If people only preserve aesthetically pleasing things history and art will only reflect a fraction of what it means to be alive.
The cost, logistics and safety of preserving Kowloon are valid concerns especially at the time it was demolished but that doesn't diminish the value of what was lost.
I understand your point and I accept that there is a curiosity to understand how such a place would have worked, in the sense of such limited space human habitation.
But come on, you can't compare it to the literal Pyramids, they are tombs, in the middle of the desert, not a sprawling block in the middle of a city that people actually needed to live in. The primary purpose matters.
For Kowloon, Were it possible at the time, perhaps exhaustive 3D scans of the building layouts and constructions before they demolished it could have been a valuable and interesting preservation of data to study later, but alas.