Picture of the week: inside kowloon walled city

All photos: VisualNews.com

The walled city was allowed by British authorities to be an unregulated Chinese settlement, reports Visual News. As a result, the mafia took it over, filling the tightly-packed area with people, brothels, hospitals and sweat shops.

Indeed, Architizer notes that the city offered no more than 40 square feet of living space per person, while buildings remained below 15 storeys in height because of low-flying airplanes overhead.

The site has since been replaced by a park with tennis courts, but the development was depicted in a detailed cross-section illustration, which reveals what life was like inside the world's most densely populated city:

For the full image, click here.