Oxford Street and other areas of Central London such as Bond Street and Piccadilly due to "pickpocketing, fraud and theft". The advent of closed-circuit television has reduced the area's attraction to scam artists and illegal street traders. Every Christmas, Oxford Street is decorated with festive lights. The tradition of Christmas lights began in 1959, five years after neighbouring Regent Street. There were no light displays in 1976 or 1977 because of economic recession, but the lights returned in 1978 when Oxford Street organised a laser display, and have continued every year since. Current practice involves a celebrity turning the lights on in
Powis Street Properties Ltd. in 1964. Many of the leases given out in 1898 had been for sixty years and so another round of redevelopment took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Cuffs was in 1956 the first to rebuild in a modernist style. Others followed and more and more ornate Victorian shops were replaced by unadorned modern blocks with cantilevered canopies and glass curtain walls. Some smaller shops were not able to pay the higher rents and were replaced by chain stores. In 1957, Christmas lights were introduced, just three years after Regent Street, two years before Oxford Street.