This reading is mainly looking into three themes: co-living for the ghosts and living, loneliness and isolation, and the ghosts as a representation of failed economic dreams.
What captivates me the most, is the relationship between the city, public housing and ghosts. Public housing often appears in blocks of concrete filled with small windows, catering to low-to-medium income level citizens. There’s a quote that resonates with me, “ The loneliness of apartment ghosts mirrors the loneliness of humans.” I noticed its lack of maintenance, such as peeling walls and gloomy staircases, would always give me chills. Adult residents, burdened by long working hours, don’t even have spaces to talk in the corridor, enhancing isolation between humans. Hence, once their neighbor is dead, horror rumors could be easily spread as they all seem ‘mysterious’ to each other. As those windows are the only way to connect with the city, no matter if you are looking from the interior or exterior, it always creates an unknown fear about losing a job, depicting the loneliness and sadness of living in a modernized city through architecture.
Building upon the idea of loneliness, the author also mentioned the idea of ‘living ghosts’, people who dedicated their lives in exchange for a promise, mostly exploited. To me, the relationship is single sided, low to middle income citizens work hard to build a modernized city, also get depressed and isolated from the cities, trapped by the capitalism of the city and cannot climb up the social ladder.
Tsang Shuk Yin
3036231265 (249 words)