https://mascontext.com/issues/trace/kowloon-walled-city-heterotopia-in-a-space-of-disappearance
Heterotopia was a term first coined by Michel Foucault in 1967 to an audience of architects where he used it to explain the spaces of otherness. These spaces are sites that are places outside all places but at the same time related to all the other sites from which it is located against. Foucault used the mirror as a metaphor for a Heterotopia due to its ability to reflect and disrupt. When considered in such a way the Kowloon Walled City can be seen as such a mirror to Hong Kong where some aspects of it confirm through its similarity with the rest of the colony but also unsettle through its rejection of the norms outside the informal settlement.
Foucault outlined principles or characteristics that are present in all Heterotopias and these can be seen in the Walled City. One such principle is that Heterotopias exist in diverse forms but can be broadly categorized as either Heterotopias of Deviance or Heterotopias of Crisis. Heterotopias of Deviance are places where those "whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed" such as prisons and psychiatric hospitals. Meanwhile, Crisis Heterotopias are places where those who, in relation to the society they live in, are in a state of crisis such as adolescents and the elderly but could equally apply to the refuge. During the Walled City's time in Hong Kong, it provided a place where those people that were in a state of crisis could reside. In particular, it allowed those refugees who had been alienated by China, but also inconsistent with the new orders of the colonial government, a place to live in a state of crisis.
