I'm not from London and rarely visit so I'm curious how it's been cleaned up? I thought you were talking about litter. Surely cost of living will change that in some ways.
Cleaned up as in gentrified, pricing Londoners out and them cashing in, being replaced with those that live behind closed doors and electric gates, the seediness has gone, no more single mums popping down the RLD, the new money does not want it, where before it was just part of life and accepted, drugs did not help that situation though.
Still the odd spot the estate agents have not persuaded the hipsters to pay lots of money, and places immigrants have taken over, Whitechapel, Shoreditch and Hackney are a case in point, property is nuts prices, the reggae and dance clubs in disused factories and the like are all gone, the working mans pubs the same. Kings Cross too, Further east is it happening, getting rid of social housing, promising new developments with social housing that never materialises.
Around Brick Lane has always been for immigrant business, in my life time, Jewish clothes and cloth, leather workshops, that as they died off and made a few quid and moved on, the Asians took over the run down shops and factories, it is all getting converted to hipster housing, coffee shops and rip off cafes.
Outside of the tourist spots, the streets are filthier than they have ever been, pot holed roads, broken pavements, untrimmed tress and bushes, wheelie bins litter the pavements and nobody cares as long as the council tax gets paid, they are raking it in with all the new flats, fuck knows where they spend it
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I hear Vauxhall has been getting the same treatment, not ventured west for a while, it just ain,t the same.