Sydney (scroll down to read more)
Kings Cross, Sydney's red-light district started out as an urban bohemia in the 1930s: home to artists, writers, actors and, later, hippies and soldiers on rec leave from Vietnam looking to relieve their tensions.
It wasn’t what you’d call a middle-class idyll, but by the 1990s it had changed again. Illegal casinos, bent cops, hookers, hard drugs, strip clubs and crime lords turned the neighbourhood into a more sinister proposition. Then, as the new millennium arrived, so did the changes.
Successive Lord Mayors, Lucy Turnbull and Clover Moore, pushed for a cleaner Cross. There was a $15 million facelift, regulation of the sex industry and a stronger police presence (a Royal Commission into corruption in the mid-1990s had purged the force). Even the strip club spruikers were told to get some manners or face banishment. A string of bars and clubs appeared, while legendary trouble spots closed. Apartment prices sky-rocketed and the traditional residents have been forced further into the suburbs. While some applaud, others are sure that a part of Sydney’s identity has been lost forever.
Writer Carrie Hutchinson
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