Duelling Again: Whorehouses
The Peterseliebuurt district wasn't one of the city's hotspots. Built as a quick adjunct to the City in response to an influx of immigrants, largely Dutch, it clung to maps of the city like a scarred, oil-stained limpet. Centuries had passed since then, and the immigrants had slowly moved out and up, taking with them any chance of gentrification. The region seemed to be cursed as a dark blot on the city's maps, attracting the worst of the city's inhabitants, and its worst ideas. A supposedly forward-thinking major had razed the last of the charming old housing, and replaced them with endless rows of unfortunately phallic tower blocks that had resulted in the district's current name, “The Peters.”
Now a fresh major had ridden into office on the back of a wave of promises of renovation, of cleansing the limpet and bringing a fresh, new populace to The Peters. This had struck a chord that resounded through the bullet-specked and arson-charred corridors of the Peterseliebuurt,which now watched and waited for this promised resurrection. Unfortunately, the man was a newcomer, a silver spoon from Jordan Heights, for whom the Peters was an urban bogeyman he was threatened with at night, a place his nanny, pulled from the district, would weep at the mention of. Now, the bogeyman was real and marking his every step, an acrid taste at the end of every press conference, his own steel-clad Gordian Knot.
For months, he wracked his brains for a means to solve this maddening problem, consulting with architects, advertisers, publicists, demolition firms, sociologists, urban planners and all manner of thinkers. With each, it was the same; the slight start at the beginning at the mention of The Peters, then the slow, solemn shake of the head at the end.
Just as he was coming to the end of his tether, a letter of resignation and the look on his father's face half-formed in his mind, an idea was brought to him. It was somewhat repulsive, relying on expulsion, demolition, bribery, trickery, and a swathe of underhand tactics, with no certainty of success. The underlying idea was simple: if the problem is that The Peters are hideous and unattractive, change that. Immediately, work began, developers picking out the best building in the district's nicest possible setting and tarting it up as fiercely as humanly possible. The surrounding towers were razed to make way for parkland, their inhabitants and the inhabitants of the chosen tower discreetly paid off to live elsewhere, while it was stripped down and fully renovated. Nice-looking families were brought in and paid to live happy lives in the towers, while prospective buyers from other cities were shown how beautiful this fresh new “Parsley District” was.
While the press was full of scorn, screaming about “tarting up”, “urban sleaze”, “stopgap measures” and long editorials about corruption and the whoring out of cities, it was to everyone's surprise that the project began to take effect. Slowly, life and money returned to the area, as the project expanded, momentum and a grand, subtle police operation excising the worst parts of the old Peters from the new stretches of Parsley, leaving the first tower as a monument to Renovation. Even as the old towers were themselves removed and replaced, it remained, the old, proud whore in a neighbourhood of gents.
Now a fresh major had ridden into office on the back of a wave of promises of renovation, of cleansing the limpet and bringing a fresh, new populace to The Peters. This had struck a chord that resounded through the bullet-specked and arson-charred corridors of the Peterseliebuurt,which now watched and waited for this promised resurrection. Unfortunately, the man was a newcomer, a silver spoon from Jordan Heights, for whom the Peters was an urban bogeyman he was threatened with at night, a place his nanny, pulled from the district, would weep at the mention of. Now, the bogeyman was real and marking his every step, an acrid taste at the end of every press conference, his own steel-clad Gordian Knot.
For months, he wracked his brains for a means to solve this maddening problem, consulting with architects, advertisers, publicists, demolition firms, sociologists, urban planners and all manner of thinkers. With each, it was the same; the slight start at the beginning at the mention of The Peters, then the slow, solemn shake of the head at the end.
Just as he was coming to the end of his tether, a letter of resignation and the look on his father's face half-formed in his mind, an idea was brought to him. It was somewhat repulsive, relying on expulsion, demolition, bribery, trickery, and a swathe of underhand tactics, with no certainty of success. The underlying idea was simple: if the problem is that The Peters are hideous and unattractive, change that. Immediately, work began, developers picking out the best building in the district's nicest possible setting and tarting it up as fiercely as humanly possible. The surrounding towers were razed to make way for parkland, their inhabitants and the inhabitants of the chosen tower discreetly paid off to live elsewhere, while it was stripped down and fully renovated. Nice-looking families were brought in and paid to live happy lives in the towers, while prospective buyers from other cities were shown how beautiful this fresh new “Parsley District” was.
While the press was full of scorn, screaming about “tarting up”, “urban sleaze”, “stopgap measures” and long editorials about corruption and the whoring out of cities, it was to everyone's surprise that the project began to take effect. Slowly, life and money returned to the area, as the project expanded, momentum and a grand, subtle police operation excising the worst parts of the old Peters from the new stretches of Parsley, leaving the first tower as a monument to Renovation. Even as the old towers were themselves removed and replaced, it remained, the old, proud whore in a neighbourhood of gents.