When Hong Kong began its post-war industrialization in earnest, Kwun Tong was one of the first places chosen for systematic development as a "new town" — a planned community built from near-scratch to house and employ a rapidly growing population. Factory construction began in the 1950s. Textile mills, plastics manufacturers, and light industry filled the flatlands reclaimed from the harbour's edge. Workers came from across the colony and from the Chinese mainland, filling public housing estates that went up alongside the factory blocks. The industrial area eventually spread to Kowloon Bay and Yau Tong. At its peak, Kwun Tong was Hong Kong's manufacturing heartland, the kind of place that supplied the goods that made Hong Kong rich, even as the wealth itself tended to accumulate elsewhere.

Every district has its local landmarks, and Kwun Tong's Mut Wah Street — nicknamed Golden Street for the ten or so jewellery shops that once crowded it — earned its notoriety in 1992. Yip Kai-Fuen, who became one of Hong Kong's most wanted criminals, walked into the street armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and robbed five of the jewellery shops in a single armed raid. The audacity of the crime lodged it in collective memory. The street still exists. The jewellery shops thinned out. Yue Man Square, the central square that served as the commercial heart of Kwun Tong for decades, is currently being demolished and rebuilt as a shopping centre by the Urban Renewal Authority — one of several redevelopment projects that have been rewriting the district's face in recent years.

As Hong Kong's manufacturing sector shifted to the Chinese mainland through the 1980s and 1990s, the factories that had defined Kwun Tong emptied out. Many were demolished; commercial towers began filling the gaps. The government recognized the pattern and responded with a formal plan: the Kowloon East regeneration initiative, which designated Kwun Tong and the adjacent Kai Tak development area as the city's "second central business district." International banks followed. Citibank (Hong Kong) placed its headquarters at One Bay East on the waterfront. Link REIT, the largest real estate investment trust listed in Hong Kong, anchored itself here too. The promenade along the coast near Kwun Tong Pier — where ferry passengers once waited for the North Point boat — has become a waterfront park.

Kwun Tong's geography gives it a particular sense of enclosure. To the north, the ridge that includes Lion Rock closes off the horizon. To the south and east, Victoria Harbour and Lei Yue Mun open toward the sea. The former Kai Tak Airport runway — a long spit of reclaimed land that juts into the harbour to the west — now anchors a cruise terminal that opened in 2013. The MTR's Kwun Tong line threads the district together, its station directly above the main road. More than two million people call greater Kowloon home, and Kwun Tong is one of the peninsula's most densely inhabited corners — a place shaped by salt, industry, and relentless reinvention, where the past is being demolished and replaced fast enough that the present can barely keep up with what it is becoming.