Powerful photos visualizing housing conditions in Hong Kong
Jul 29, 2019
I was going to react to Alberto's post about the New York Times's article about economic inequality in Hong Kong, which is proposed as one origin to explain the current protest movement. I agree that the best graphic in this set is the "photoviz" showing the "coffins" or "cages" that many residents live in, because of the population density.
Then I searched the archives, and found this old post from 2015 which is the perfect response to it. What's even better, that post was also inspired by Alberto.
The older post featured a wonderful campaign by human rights organization Society for Community Organization that uses photoviz to draw attention to the problem of housing conditions in Hong Kong. They organized a photography exhibit on this theme in 2014. They then updated the exhibit in 2016.
Here is one of the iconic photos by Benny Lam:
I found more coverage of Benny's work here. There is also a book that we can flip on Vimeo.
In 2017, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) published drone footage showing the outside view of the apartment buildings.
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What's missing is the visual comparison to the luxury condos where the top 1 percent live. For these, one can visit the real estate sites, such as Sotheby's. Here is their "12 luxury homes for sales" page.
Another comparison: a 1000 sq feet apartment that sits between those extremes. The photo by John Butlin comes from SCMP's Post Magazine's feature on the apartment:
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Also check out my review of Alberto's fantastic, recent book, How Charts Lie.
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