The Concept of Neighborhood and Varieties of Housing

Expensive housing built up along a park--new housing construction with bamboo structure around--you are looking at the top floor of a 2-3 story house

A relatively new "estate"

Waterloo Road looking north toward mountains and New Territories beyond

I talked with a Chinese professor of linguistics who had recently completed a dissertation on Washington, D.C. Chinatown. She said there was no comparable word to "neighborhood" in Chinese. When you ask Americans where they are from in a city, they name a neighborhood. When you ask that in Hong Kong or Shanghai, from her experience, they gave you the name of a building, an intersection, or perhaps a street. Their sense of place is different. Perhaps this is because the texture of the place is so more fine with this density of population. But also, in Hong Kong, many traditional neighborhoods are gone. The government began to create public housing "estates" about 50 years ago and most of the population lives in subsidies housing. Many of the older estates had 100 square feet apartments. While Kowloon Tong, where we live is thought to be upscale, estates are close by. So I have a photo essay on the housing close to where we live to give of a feel of the range within a short distance.

Kowloon Tong is at the northern end of Kowloon, right before the train goes through the mountain into the New Territories.