At the center of a surge in deadly violence, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl pledged yesterday to pick out parts of troubled Homewood for intensive efforts to instill hope amid ruins and bullets.

He said his administration is working with community groups on "just trying to give hope to specific blocks, or two blocks at a time. We come in and put all of our resources into two blocks, clean them up, show people we're serious and move on to the next two blocks."

But a street used as the backdrop for his message quickly proved how difficult that cleanup could be. Race Street was the scene of last week's fatal shooting of Antwann Jackson, 21, and a prime target of police undercover work, and yet five hours after the mayor left it, police were back, responding to another hail of bullets there.

Gunfire struck several cars. But no one was injured in the shooting, which occurred on Race Street's 7100 block -- the spot where Mr. Jackson was hit last week and where a makeshift memorial now stands.

Police last night were trying to determine if the shooting was retaliation.

"I heard 15 consecutive shots," said Deborah Nunley, 47, who was visiting her mother on nearby Idlewild Street.

Mr. Ravenstahl, she said, visited the neighborhood at the wrong time of day: "If he were here right now, he would be able to experience what we experience on a weekly basis."

In the early afternoon, the mayor's staff inspected Homewood's alleys, including Formosa and Fleury ways, witnessing signs of the intractable nature of the neighborhood's woes. A child's skateboard sat a few feet from a trash-strewn garage. New windows, recently put in by would-be remodelers, were uniformly shattered. Building inspectors wrote more than 75 citations for weeds, trash and building code violations, but struggled to explain the persistence of derelict houses across Tioga Street from Pittsburgh Faison K-8 school.

Mr. Ravenstahl was there on one of his Taking Care of Business tours -- walk-throughs that usually end with a promise of a few street trees, decorative lamps and maybe new trash cans. Homewood was different.

"Overwhelmingly, the response from the business owners here was that stuff is all good, it's needed, it's necessary, but we'll give it all back for more police presence and public safety," the mayor said. "Because if you don't feel safe, and you don't feel your investment is going to thrive, you're not going to put your money there."

On Formosa Way, where bodies have fallen for years, police Cmdr. Larry Ross talked about the difficulty of rooting out the drug trade from an alley with no lights, a scared population and a nightly surge in traffic.

"They'll come down here and do their business and disperse," he said. "So we wait at the periphery and pick them up."

And then they come back.

Mr. Ravenstahl said a Public Works Department crew would be there today to clean up trash and weeds.

On Fleury Way, state Rep. Joe Preston, D-East Liberty, told Mr. Ravenstahl that worst-in-a-decade body counts may be the result of good police work.

"As violence increases, it tells me in a sense that the police have increased their arrest record," Mr. Preston later told reporters. "Because instead of just one person controlling an area, you have four or five people fighting for that same territory. ... So when the police are doing their job, you've got four or five people who conflict through violence to try to take over."

"Our country is in sad economic times," said city Councilman Ricky Burgess, who represents Homewood. "And these sad economic times breed hopelessness, which is the breeding ground of crime and violence."

Mr. Burgess said that Race Street features "a group of young people acting out." There are other loosely organized "clusters" throughout Homewood and many other neighborhoods, he said.

The city has set aside $200,000 to pay for the Pittsburgh Initiative to Reduce Crime, an effort guided by New York researcher David M. Kennedy to identify violent groups, gather them, warn them of the coming storm and crack down.

Mr. Burgess said contracts are being drafted, and Mr. Kennedy and University of Pittsburgh researchers are starting to receive data. It's going to be around six months, though, before the thugs are assembled, told that enough is enough, and shown the carrot of help and the stick of enforcement.

"In the long term, it's clear that we're going to have to be more strategic, and have a more comprehensive approach," said Mr. Ravenstahl. "In the short term, we're going to continue to do what we have been doing."

Tomorrow, the Brother To Brother Leadership Forum is hosting a meeting on gun violence and the city's new anti-crime initiative in the former Reizenstein Middle School at 6 p.m.