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City of Darkness: Revisited

AN UNEASY ALLIANCE

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Orange Urban Services refuse bins were located around the City and collected nightly.

The idea that to enter the Walled City was to enter a totally different world where all the norms and regulations of ordinary urban life were entirely absent is deep-rooted and almost impossible to shake. To this day, many people believe that the police never went there, or that if they did it was in only in groups of 40 or more. And against this background, it seems inconceivable that any of the other government departments would have had any sort of involvement at all with the City.

But as the official document below shows, nothing could be further from the truth. The City could not have survived for long without the modern conveniences that the rest of us take for granted – notably electricity and a safe water supply, but there were a whole host of other less noticeable incursions by the authorities that helped keep the City running safely and, more or less, efficiently.

This report was written in 1969 and served pretty much as a template until the City’s demolition in 1993. Government involvement with the Walled City may have been kept at arm’s length and never officially recognised, but as you can see that never meant it didn’t happen.

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