Founded in 1972, the Society for Community Organization (SoCO) in Hong Kong recently released this series of startling photographs that show the cramped living conditions of residents by shooting entire ‘apartments’ from above. While the use of a wide-angle lens certainly dramatizes the effect, there is no doubt that these are very small living quarters.
According to SoCO:
- There are approximately 100,000 people living in inadequate housing such as: cagehomes, bedspaces, cubicles, sub-divided units, cocklofts and roof-top huts (2010)
- There are approximately 200,000 registered applicants (which consists of 350,000+ people) on the waiting list for public rental housing (June 2012)
- There are approximately 93,500 ‘singletons’ applicants on the waiting list for public rental housing (HK gov. provided 2,000 units for singletons per year)
You can find a larger gallery of these apartments on the SoCO website that are not shot from directly above here. Scanning the QR code drafts an email petition to the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR, Cy Leung. A similar series was done by Michael Wolf entitled 100 x 100 that showed 100 different Hong Kong ‘apartments’ that were 100 square feet in size.
You should also check out the Kowloon Walled City that was demolished in 1994. At a time the walled city contained 33,000 residents within a 6.5-acre (0.026 km2; 0.0102 sq mi) border.
source [twistedsifters]