Hackney is poor, gentrified, central, peripheral, ex-sweatshop... it's a good example of how London swirls with change. Up until the mid-19th century, it was known for its rural character. It became, with the railways, an industrial center and an active hub of the kind of business that hires non-English speakers at sweatshop rates. In the early 1980s, many of these businesses closed.
Bordering on gentrified Islington, it has canals along which gentrification spread like athlete's foot. Other parts remained resistant to buyouts, partly because so many old buidlings had been torn down to build the swathes of large public housing buildings called, with the typical respect the British have for people with lands who don't work, "Estates".
That just about sums up Hackney's history, estates to estates. Given its rough edge, it's actually a great place to live. My clever chum Roz lives there. I had another chum who did some arts work for Hackney Council, which in those days sounded oppressively politically correct.