From DW Documentary.

Cheng Chung Au lives in an illegal dwelling on the roof of a tower block in Hong Kong. Despite the rat plague and the typhoon risk. In New York City, too, there were simple dwellings for servants on rooftops – long before penthouses and rooftop bars came along.

Like thousands of other people in Hong Kong, Cheng Chung Au lives in an illegally constructed ‘cage flat’ on the roof of a high-rise building. Over the decades, he’s come to terms with the rats and the typhoons. He and his wife couldn’t afford a regular flat and the waiting lists for social housing are long.

Until the early 20th century, there was also a ‘city above the city’ in New York – for servants and workers. Then these very same spaces were developed into exclusive penthouse flats and rooftop bars. In the 1920s, plans for the Rockefeller Centre complex in Midtown Manhattan included rooftop gardens that were envisioned as a public park, with bridges to other buildings. The Great Depression prevented the project’s realization.

Today, apartments on the upper levels of New York’s mega-high-rise buildings are on the markets for hundreds of millions of dollars. In the future, newly constructed buildings with roof surfaces in the US metropolis will have to be greened or fitted with solar panels. Greenery can prevent sewers from overflowing during heavy rainfall. And the insulating effect of soil and vegetation saves cooling and heating energy. For activist Anastasia Cole Plakias, whose Brooklyn Grange is one of the largest rooftop farms in the US, the potential of green roofs is far from exhausted.

Rooftops are extreme zones: A refuge for people looking for a home, and a testing ground for the city of the future.

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