In the 1950s and 1960s a combination of people moving to new outer suburbs, Auckland City Council policy of "slum" clearances and the construction of the motorway through Freemans Bay, led to plummeting rents and a drastic downturn in the economic fortunes of the area directly west of the CBD. The 1950s and 1960s saw many Pacific Islanders arriving in the country and they tended to take up residence in low cost areas - Ponsonby was one of them. By the 1970s, the combination of artists, bohemians, gays and lesbians, and Polynesian migrant workers, attracted by the low rents created a distinct culture in the area, with which the area is still largely identified in the popular imagination of Auckland.