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lor 26 the odds are that if you're
watching this video you're probably
doing it alone or in a pretty small
group of friends you're probably
watching this with a reasonable amount
of privacy around you but what if you
were suddenly teleported to the least
private and the most crowded place in
the world and were forced to live there
what would your day-to-day life end up
being like
currently the most dense concentration
of people you can find anywhere in the
world is here in Mumbai in the Dharavi
slums
700,000 people live here packed together
into just 2 square kilometers which
would be like shoving the entire
population of Alaska down into just two
city blocks life in Dharavi is harsh but
it's not the most crowded settlement in
human history and therefore it's not
where you're getting teleported to as
recently as 1993 the title of the most
crowded place on earth belonged to a
tiny sized settlement in Hong Kong known
as the kowloon walled city with
nicknames like the city of anarchy and
the city of darkness you know that it's
about to get pretty wild but before we
get too crazy here you need to first
understand this the population density
in New York City is only ten thousand
four hundred and thirty one people per
square kilometer the density of people
in Dharavi is more like two hundred and
seventy seven thousand people per square
kilometer over 26 times more dense than
New York Kowloon walled city on the
other hand was more like 1.9 million
people per square kilometer 182 times as
densely packed together than even New
York the city occupied a space of only
six and a half acres or roughly the same
as four football fields but was home to
as many as 50,000 people living there to
put it in another way imagine that you
live in a comfortable 1,200 square foot
pole
all by yourself but then you shove nine
more people into that same poem with you
further imagine that your home is merely
one unit of a 14-story building and
every other unit in that building is
just as full as yours then imagine
hundreds of those buildings all crammed
together into just those four football
fields of space in fact if every single
person in the world lived as closely
together to one another as the people
did in the walled city the entire human
species would be capable of living and
working together in just Rhode Island
but what would it actually be like for
you to live in such a horrific ly
crowded place the street level of the
walled city was full of dentist and
doctor offices without any official
operating licenses so you'd always have
to just take your chances with a random
person who was claiming to be a dentist
anytime that you wanted to get your
teeth checked it could have been pretty
good or it could have been some Rando
off the street who decided two hours ago
that he was now a dentist restaurants
routinely offered dog meat as a tempting
alternative to normal food all without
any adherence to sanitation regulations
dozens of alleyways on the ground inside
the interior of the city connected each
side and the living units deep in the
dark interior that lacked any windows
these alleys were only between three and
six feet wide and you would have to
carry an umbrella with you to shield
yourself from the drippy water pipes and
people throwing garbage out above you
the alleys were almost permanently dark
since the unbelievably dense slums above
blocked out most of the sunlight the
walled city was essentially the world's
largest squatter camp without any
official government services or even
laws and had developed a nickname the
city of anarchy as the population began
to skyrocket from a few hundred up to
tens of thousands both the British and
the Chinese governments were reluctant
to interfere with a weird situation and
carried out a very hands-off approach
with regards to the city this is how
random people had claimed to be dentists
chef's served dogs in their cafes and
why nobody knew what to do with the
garbage so they either threw it out of
their windows or hauled it up to the
roof to be abandoned forever since the
official government rarely intervened
and whatever happened inside the walled
city became increasingly attractive to
the people who society frowned upon like
gangsters pimps drug dealers sex workers
dog eaters refugees and apparently even
some normal opiate maybe crazy people
who simply saw an opportunity further up
into the dark layers of the city you
could easily find opium dens heroin
stands that operated as freely as
convenient stores and brothels that
operated with impunity the city was a
dangerous place for police or probably
anybody really to enter so they only
ever intervened with large groups and
never alone so if you ran into trouble
inside any call nine-one-one the chances
are that you'd probably not get an
answer on average each person paid 35
Hong Kong dollars for about five US
dollars per month for their rent for a
40 square foot room of space which is
about this size relative to an actual
human for reference thousands of these
little rooms existed side-by-side of
each other stretching up to 14 stories
high around 500 buildings were
constructed inside of the city without a
single licensed architect or engineer
providing any kind of guidance
whatsoever plumbing and sewage was
almost non-existent
while tiny metal fabrication shops made
up a good percentage of the units
between the ground
and the fifth floors while the metal
shops provided some form of employment
and income they also added vastly to the
horrible pollution problem found inside
while the street-level inside of the
city was always cast in darkness no
matter the time of day or a year there
was also a network of stairs and ramps
that would enable you to traverse the
city without ever having to set foot on
the dark surface when zooming out to see
the entire walled city you can notice a
courtyard in the center which was the
prime social gathering place and the
only area on the street where the Sun
could reach as mentioned previously the
roof on the city was always covered in
garbage and was the prime dumping spot
for residents but it was also a pretty
cool spot for you to go and check out
the planes that were all
just crashing into everything you see
the walled city was located only half a
mile away from Kai Tak Airport and
planes landing there would routinely fly
just over the city before landing which
contributed to enormous noise pollution
the camp was originally built out across
the ancient walled cities borders on the
street level but a space ran out on the
ground and more people were coming in
all the time that they began building
structure after structure on top of
those old ones the residents realized
though that building higher than 14
stories could result in the airplanes
that were landing over at Kai Tak to
collide and kill all of them instead so
yeah nobody ever built anything above
that life inside was dark dirty cramped
loud and often violent but a lot of
people seemed to actually enjoy it since
it kept attracting more and more people
over the years your life inside would be
guaranteed to be radically different
from the life you know now because there
isn't really any place on the earth
that's quite like what the kowloon
walled city was like unfortunately you
no longer can visit unless you have a
time machine because the city was
finally demolished by the Hong Kong
government in 1994 after it became just
too awesome for them to handle all that
we have left of the city today is a
really lame park where it used to stand
but we thankfully have a lot of amazing
photographs that people took of it back
when it used to exist like these that
give you some kind of sense of what it
used to be like however there is a
pretty wacky arcade in Japan called the
anata no warehouse in Kawasaki has
created a faithful multi-level
recreation of part of the walled city so
that's probably your best chance of
getting to experience what I just talked
about in this video if you end up going
there one of the first things that
you'll probably want to do is take
pictures and luckily there's a class on
Skillshare for that professional
photographer Dale McManus teaches this
fantastic course which walks you through
the process of taking professional
quality photos on your iPhone for
whatever you want to take pictures of
this is just one of over 25,000 classes
on Skillshare which each teach you
something that you can
use for your career your school or just
for fun a few more that I would
recommend are the productivity
masterclass by Thomas Frank motion
graphics from Kurtz Kazakh and
storytelling 101 all of which you can
download offline on the iOS or Android
apps you can learn from any of these
more than 25,000 classes into higher Lee
for free for two whole months by signing
up at SK LSH slash real life floor 26
and then it's only $10 per month
afterwards you'll be directly supporting
real life floor as well and as always
thank you for watching