I'VE written a lot over the years about the emerging sophistication of The Hills and the north-west, thanks to growth-centre urban development. But there is a downside.

From a sleepy little area of about 52,000 residents in 1970, Baulkham Hills shire's population has tripled to more than 150,000 today. I've watched in amazement in the past 30 years as a corner of Sydney's backyard has been transformed into a thriving community of burgeoning centres.

Like some civic Cinderella, Castle Hill seems to have changed suddenly at midnight from being a nondescript town into a glamorous hub.

As my two kids grew up up, I've seen a dairy farm near my home in Castle Hill turned into a wealthy housing compound surrounded by high walls. A bunch of hick shops not out of place in Nyngan in Central western NSW disappeared in the Castle Hill ''CBD'' as it became a thriving shopping, entertainment and service centre to rival the retail palaces of Sydney itself.

But all this growth and prosperity has been by inward growth. Houses have become flats. Whole streets have been flattened for block after block of units. The so-called Garden Shire has lost much of its character, the colours faded.

Only half jokingly, I dubbed Baulkham Hills ‘‘Balcony Hills'' because of the phenomenal density created by the State Government's insistence on cramming more people into every hectare.

Then there's the crime. Mega-centres like our bigger pubs and shopping complexes are magnets to petty and not so petty crims. The spenders flock in and the bad guys follow. They look around at the well-heeled and go on burglary sprees.

House and car break-ins, theft and assault in public are now so commonplace I simply don't have the space each week to run details in this newspaper.

And coming in a decade or so - the fabled North West Rail Link. A railway to The Hills and beyond, giving the drug dealers, pickpockets and standover merchants yet another packed venue to work - and a convenient getaway vehicle.

This is the price of growing up.