Our city government may be in financial trouble, but the good news is that many neighborhoods such as Highland Park are thriving. I spotlight Highland Park because it has just completed a community plan that largely substantiates that claim -- as reported by Jan Ackerman in the Jan. 26 Post-Gazette. Also, my family has lived here for 33 years.

		Clarke Thomas is a Post-Gazette senior editor (clt34@pitt.edu).

Many of us Highland Parkers consider this community of 6,749 one of Pittsburgh's hidden jewels -- a comfortable, well-maintained place with an assortment of homes, including Arts and Crafts and other Victorian houses with stained glass and crafted woodwork. They come at prices 10 to 20 percent lower than neighborhoods, such as Squirrel Hill and Shadyside, more touted to newcomers by real estate agents

This is a community that quietly gets things done, beyond the customary neighborhood endeavors -- house tours, festivals and action against crime and zoning violations. A dozen years ago, the community in an outstanding volunteer effort built a superplayground in Highland Park itself. Then during the 1990s the community resisted efforts to cover the upper reservoir in the city park, which would have scuttled the appeal of its surrounding walkway for strolling and jogging. Working with the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, the Highland Park Community Development Corp. with the leadership of architect David Hance, came up with an alternative -- a microfiltration plant to safeguard the water after it leaves the open reservoir. Built in a period style compatible with the neighborhood, the adjacent development includes a babbling brook walking trail down the hillside to Carnegie Lake.

The neighborhood ambience has been heightened by the presence of Amy Enrico's Tazza d'Oro, a European-style coffeehouse that attracts people from across the city. The recent opening in nearby East Liberty of a Home Depot and a Whole Foods store are clear assets for Highland Park.

What is particularly intriguing is that Highland Park is making a virtue of racial diversity. The community plan showed the racial balance now is 65 percent white, 30 percent black and 5 percent Asian, about the same as the city as a whole. That this has been accomplished in an upper-middle-class neighborhood is testament to its ability to attract professionals, white, black, and Asian, particularly academic, medical and hospital-related families.

I remember 20 years ago attending a meeting of the Highland Park Community Club where the discussion was so dotted with anti-black code phrases that I walked out. A year ago, in contrast, at a meeting of the club a white man rose to testify that he had moved to the neighborhood from Churchill precisely because of its diversity. And a real estate agent told me this is an increasing selling point with people who realize that the world is no longer lily-white.

Shortcomings were also revealed by the community plan, such as the lack of youth activities. In response, the community is collaborating with the Union Project, a faith-based effort which has turned the former Union Baptist Church on Negley Avenue into an arts place, to see if it can also be a youth center. Moreover, the CDC is working with the Pittsburgh Zoo on a twofold switch: the zoo would extend its parking lot farther up Heth Run in order to leave open space for a soccer field at the present lower end along Butler Street.

The plan also spotlighted a neighborhood weakness in its southwest quadrant, the area close to Stanton and Negley, with many rental properties poorly maintained by landlords -- a problem across the city, by the way. The CDC has been rehabilitating houses there to sell to homeowners. It also is talking of forming tenants' associations to bring collective pressure on lax landlords.

Another finding is that families tend to send their children to school outside the neighborhood, whether to public school magnets or private or parochial schools. There is an interesting story here. When the magnet schools were instituted in response to desegregation suits, many Highland Park parents in a supportive move sent their children to the East Hills international studies magnet, which in turn fed into Schenley High School. Upwardly mobile families of all racial groups continue to send their children to magnets for a racially balanced diversity. But a result has been that the Fulton Elementary and Peabody High School student bodies became largely African-American. However, some white families have stayed with neighborhood schools.

Having said all this about the Highland Park can-do spirit, I have to revert to my first paragraph to emphasize that, along with all the other neighborhoods, its health in terms of crime prevention and infrastructure upkeep ultimately will depend upon that of the city and its government. To paraphrase John Donne, no neighborhood is an island to itself. But even while that situation is righted, it is neighborhoods such as ours that will propel this city forward.