The other day, on a beautiful morning in Hong Kong, I decided to go and have a walk and a late breakfast in Kowloon City, an old neighborhood of low-rise buildings across the harbor from where I live. As I mentioned in my Real Travel column in this month's National Geographic Traveler, I'm big on walking as a way to really get to know a place.

Kowloon City is well worth exploring, for it has a fascinating history. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it was the site of a lawless, walled state-less enclave within the British Colony, where gangsters ruled, and criminals took hiding. (You can read more about the old Kowloon Walled City in Martin Booth's wonderful childhood memoir, Gweilo.) The Walled City was torn down in 1993, but the surrounding area still has lots of terrific old Art Deco architecture, a thriving Thai immigrant community, and lots of the great little Hong Kong lunch counters we call cha chaan tengs.

The other reason why Kowloon City has such a wonderful sense of place is that it happens to be located in the flight path of Hong Kong's old Kai Tak airport. Huge planes used to swoop low and terrifyingly over its rooftops (check out this great video) on their way to a Kai Tak landing. For safety reasons, the government banned the construction of tall buildings in the area. And so, Kowloon City remained relatively untouched by the intensive urban development that has changed Hong Kong's landscape so dramatically in the last fifteen years.

Since Kai Tak airport closed in 1999, the developers have been circling, and high-rises are going up--along with new highways and overpasses that create a more modern kind of wall around Kowloon City. When I got off at the nearest bus stop and started walking towards the center of the neighborhood, the first landscape I encountered had zero sense of place--was I in Sofia, Bulgaria, Seoul or London?

 
My Saturday morning slog through this grim pedestrian walkway came to mind today when I read this letter from a reader responding to something I wrote in my Real Travel column. I'd mentioned how a friend and I had found it impossible to escape on foot from her new Hong Kong hotel, which had been built isolated from the nearby neighborhood, surrounded by ramps and highways. My reader took issue:

Hong Kong is one of the most walkable cities in the world!  Downtown or Central has miles of overhead walkways that connect all major government, office and shopping centers. [...] The walkways pass directly into and through shopping areas, also even the post-office and many major hotels. On Kowloon there are literally miles of underground walkways....

He's right--Hong Kong is a lot more accessible to walkers than many cities.  Overhead pedestrian bridges and underground subways make it possible to cross busy Hong Kong highways on foot, which is admittedly a lot more than you'll find in big American car culture cities like Los Angeles. The network of raised catwalks and connections between Hong Kong's downtown shopping malls and offices is a unique urban landscape, a real Vertical City.

Yet, as I make my way around Hong Kong on foot, I often find my mood turns frustrated and irritible. Yes, I can get across the six lane highway, but the bridge that allows me to do so requires me to take a senseless three block detour. On a sunny, beautiful day, I must abandon the comfort of huge banyan trees to plunge into a dark, tunnel. The walkways bear the mark of the planner's drafting pencil, included as an afterthought to segregate pedestrians from the all-powerful and potent highway drivers. Fences and gates make sure I won't be wandering off from the "approved" path.

Part of the pleasure of foot travel is that it is spontaneous. When I travel, I walk with the expectation I will discover something I wasn't looking for. I walk with the secret hope that I will get lost.

What makes a city a great walking city? Accessibility is only half the equation. The parts of Hong Kong that I love to walk around have the life and chaos of a streetscape that developed organically from the ground up--the bustle of people on foot, tending to their storefront businesses, hauling things in their pushcarts.

In streets like these, with a little imagination, a traveler can wander back into another time.

But in a pedestrian subway, I know I'm not going to encounter any epiphanies, or any surprises (at least not the pleasant kind!). They are just a means to an end, put there as an afterthought to the freeways.

Fortunately, in Kowloon City as elsewhere in Hong Kong, there's almost always light (or, even better, a cha chaan teng) at the end of these tunnels!

 mmmm! my favorite steamed pork bun.