Gary Poster, with essential assists from Galyn Norwood, Phiroon Phihakendr, Jose Quijada, Pavandeep Kalra.
All cities have their dark side, but few, like Sydney, had their darkest moments at birth.
The slum clearances that restored some order to the dangerous streets of Sydney were the first of many modifications to the city's fabric. Old Sydney was a stone town. The softly glowing Hawkesbury sandstone, seemingly designed on some primeval color wheel to complement the Australian sun, sea and sky, was hewn from quarries in the suburbs of Bondi, Maroubra, Neutral Bay and Pyrmont. The city center has been so zealously made over by each generation that little remains of the early buildings of Sydney Cove. It seems miraculous that any of them have survived so many waves of reinvention.