A committed conservationist, Barbara Hunt, accused her local council, Spelthorne Council, in Staines, Middlesex, of transforming one of the town's main streets into a "messy" Brixton. She describes her area thus: "[Like Brixton] the town centre has become very run-down. It's losing all its sense of respectability. It's dying on its feet."

She has a point. Down my front step, turn right, walk for 30 yards, and there is a huge billboard put up by the police, who are seeking information about a robbery: someone was robbed with a pistol to his heart. Walk another 30 yards and there is another police billboard seeking witnesses of another murderous heist. On Brixton Hill, another billboard announces an abduction. A body was found on the pavement on Sunday morning, stabbed to death.

Yet Brixton was once rather twee. The landmarks were created largely out of sugar dynasties, based on slave labour in the Caribbean. Philanthropists could afford huge sums for architectural experiment and the like. Now, a lot of it has fallen into disrepair and multi-purpose use.

Take, for instance, St Matthew's Church, with all its historical charm. It throbs nightly and climaxes on the weekend in a hedonistic fury of rave and garage music. Young people piss (literally) on the graves of those whom the God of the Anglican church ordained to be buried in the graveyard.

The march of time and the ruthlessness of the entrepreneur continue to transform the High Street. You cannot get a white shirt or a bow tie or a tweed flat cap of the sort once popularised by Dunn's. You would be lucky to find a traditional laundry - and I do not mean those rough-and-ready dry-cleaners that turn around a suit within the hour.

Yes, Barbara Hunt, one should be very nostalgic about Brixton. Ron, the butcher, carried on his father's business until 1983. He joined as an apprentice and worked his way to the top right at the back of my house on Railton Road. His cuts were exquisite. Customers came from as far as Surrey to patronise his shop. Railton Road had a builder's, a paint shop, an off-licence, a dry-cleaner, a record shop and an arcade of bits and pieces. Enter Tesco and, before long, all that is left of the old world is an undertaker on the High Street, who may well have buried Ron the Butcher and the rest of them.

Our schools disgorge hundreds of young Brixtonians whose appetites are whetted not by the corner shop with its limited range, but by the shopping malls that bring Nike and the rest in full blast. They are immensely bright; knowledgeable on a scale that cannot be compared with my time. The goggle box is responsible. All but a handful have been abroad, from New York to the Caribbean to Europe. With this huge change in consciousness, it would be a miracle if we maintained an 18th-century townscape.

Brixton on a Friday night looks rather like the West End, with a huge international flavour. I was having a coffee on the pavement in Coldharbour Lane. A young woman from Australia plonked herself down and intervened in a conversation I was having with the proprietor. She was travelling the world. In Thailand and other far-flung places, she had inquired about where in London she should rest her basket. She said the popular choice was Brixton. "What did they recommend Brixton for?" I asked. "The buzz, the buzz!" was her reply. She was aware of the crime, the mugging and the burglary, but that did not deter her. She brushed it aside, pointing out that such was the norm in all cities of the world.

The bravado of people like that conceals the real fear of the indigenous population - the straight working class, white and black. They don't fear the kids we know locally because the community can control them: word gets about that young Jack (let's say) is going off the rails, and carefully chosen words, or maybe a job offer, keep the evil spirits away. But always, come the summer, new faces shed the burden of school and all south London is their manor. I am not anti-conservationist but, in these changing townscapes, I aim at conserving young souls.

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