Introducing Huaguoyang district in Guiyang, China -the country's densest area.
Normally building code demands x amount of people need to live within y vicinity of z amount of green space, graded on how utilised. It's such a norm now it's become self-policing as a market standard - people will literally not buy unless they have all the amenities under the developments. This kinda stuff:
However Guiyang, the poorest major city in China experimented with Hong Kong's postwar illegal version, of hyper-density, straight onto the 'street' (largely pedestrianised). It's now become an unintentional tourist attraction, so ugly its beautiful, housing half a million.
Guiyang is now absolutely booming - largely leapfrogging China's industrialisation as a backwater, reborn as a tech superhub.
This is what it's like to live in the district -note how dark it gets at dusk, before the streetlights come on, similar to midtown Manhattan or unregulated Hong Kong.
This has strong Kowloon vibes, though with more space. Traditionally Chinese people -so used to high density in what was the world's largest population for most of history -live most of their lives in public, in the 'Third Space', creating the famed streetlife. Worth mentioning how quiet and dystopian it is on any street with traffic (where the love of overhead walkways take over), but how much busier it gets once you're in the pedestrian streets/ squares.
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