Alley a good place to start cleaning up

Bob Ziller mural at 800 Penn, a photo mural by Pulitzer Prize winner Martha Rial on a wall along a parking area at Wood Street and Stoner, plus new lighting and a large, long rectangular tree planter at the parking site. The Stoner Way improvements will include painting of wooden fencing and plywood boards over windows, demolition of crumbling garages and solar security lights.

If the Pittsburgh area is an ocean, improvements on Stoner Way are a drop, but drops are what we decide we can afford.

“We don’t have a solution to blight and vacant land,” Mr. Divack said. “We have no comprehensive plan” for a more sweeping overhaul of terrible conditions.

This is America. Anyone can own a pig sty, impose it on his neighbors, pay fines for code violations and keep torturing the neighborhood as long as he is current on his taxes. Even if he isn’t current, a municipality may take forever to yank it out from under him. And it still might sit there, waiting to qualify for triage.

“It is not fun to think about how hard this is,” Mr. Divack said. “It’s more fun to think about the Steelers, even when they are losing.

“We are two cities,” he said of Pittsburgh and the surrounding area. “We can name the beauty spots. It’s easy to sell this city because it’s a great city. But we don’t show people a third of it.”

People say how much they love their neighborhood all the time. But places have no need of love. What they need is respect.