Hidden behind the bustling world
After the discussion on Tuesday, I think Hong Kong is a very good example for vertical slum. The example Kowloon walled city that David showed in the class had reminded me the actually living condition in Hong Kong for the low-income families.
Hong Kong gives us the first impression is a developed, prosperous and an open international metropolis. Theoretically, the livelihood of the people of Hong Kong should be very desirable. In a small city, where 80% of the land is mountainous and wetland. Therefore, there is even less land available for development. In order to accommodate the 700 million people, it is not an easy thing so many workers cannot afford to buy a house. Due to which, the land and housing rates are exuberantly high and there is a long waiting list to get proper accommodation. This is the reason why many people are unfortunately living in these slum homes and managing under the hardest conditions. So people started to develop different solutions for living in the subdivided unit, coffin room, or cage home.
Caged homes first appeared in the 1950s as temporary shelters for migrant workers. As the name suggests, that is a bed-space apartment surrounded by a barbed wire bed. People who live in the cage, known as "cage people". This is the worst living conditions in Hong Kong.
Subdivided units are a ubiquitous kind of rental housing. They are flat which shown on the original approved plan of a building being subdivided into two or more individual rooms.
Although the Hong Kong Government proceeded to build public housing, to address the housing problems of low-income families, but still unable to meet all the needs of the people. But it is not easy to solve the housing problem completely. There are too many complex social factors, power, capital, ideas, traditions are intertwined behind the urban structure and urban ecology. I think even though there are a lot of solutions to solve the problem, but with all these factors act together, solutions are less and less. People probably don’t have a choice to live the way they want to live, but if one solution doesn’t work, they would continue to find another solution.
In a slum, space is a precious resource, and so is it in Hong Kong. That's why obviously Hong Kong citizens are much richer, but they are still leading a slum-like lives. The space is so luxury there and exploits most of the people's wealth. The only way for a normal citizen to win more space in Hong Kong is to create more value for the society and earn more money accordingly. However, when the wealth of the city increases, the value of the space correspondingly rises. Now there seems not a good solution to it.
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