Tom Tikkanen comes from Calumet, Mich., a former copper mining outpost near Lake Superior where they report inches of snow the way we track traffic jams. The town's entire population couldn't fill the club seats at the Wachovia Center. And almost everyone is white.

A place, in other words, that would seem to have nada in common with Philadelphia. Particularly the predominantly Puerto Rican Kensington section of North Philadelphia.

This week, however, Tikkanen; his wife, Babette Jokela; and her 15-year-old son, Cory, discovered that, trite as it may sound, at their core, cities, like people, can be wondrously alike.

Especially when they've been at the brink of ruin.

Philadelphia hosted a national conference for managers, architects, developers and community leaders involved with Main Street projects like the one Tikkanen directs in Calumet.

The projects, funded by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, are designed to revive the faintly beating commercial hearts of 1,500 towns, villages and urban neighborhoods across the country.

Which is why a five-hour tour of the Centro de Oro, along North Fifth Street between Huntingdon and Allegheny, was one of the hottest tickets.

The nation's rising Hispanic population may have upset some small communities and inspired jingoist legislation. But at this conference, Latino culture and demographics were not only accepted but embraced.

Close to 50 business owners, Realtors, architects, city managers and planners from places such as San Francisco; Washington; Boston; Albuquerque, N.M.; Newnan, Ga.; and Green River, Wyo. - signed up and paid $30 each for the soldout tour of one of the few urban Latino Main Street Projects in the country.

Tikkanen and his family, looking for something "different and vibrant," chose the Centro de Oro tour not knowing the area is one of the most long-lived, well-orchestrated revitalization efforts of its kind.

Most Main Street projects focus solely on commercial investment, said Doug Loescher, director of the National Trust's Main Street Center. But since 1982, the Hispanic Association of Contractors and Enterprises (HACE) has managed to coordinate a complicated attack on the neighborhood's problems.

"They're into commercial development, housing and social services," Loescher said. "It takes acumen to pull that all together."

The results are far from perfect.

The work of cleaning up streets, rebuilding storefronts, funding arts programs, organizing street fairs, beating back criminals and vandals, and persuading local residents to join the effort? Delicate. Painstaking. Demoralizing. And - Main Street's favorite byword - incremental.

Centro de Oro has been a stable Puerto Rican neighborhood for decades. So, recruiting volunteers and rallying neighbors is much easier than in places like Washington, where new immigrants are pouring in, many who don't speak English and many without legal status.

Wearing a button on his lapel reading "Yo Prometo Respetar a mi Barrio" - "I promise to respect my neighborhood" - Cesar Santiago, HACE's Main Street manager, held the door while the tour group filed in to visit the well-established arts and cultural center Taller Puertorriqueño.

"We've received $4 million from the city and state to do streetscape renovations," said Santiago, pointing to the stained glass palm trees of Madera y Musica Laboratorio, a wood-carving and music studio across the street.

HACE also works with the community to develop affordable housing, and provide health care and employment training.

Hoping to take advantage of the technical expertise and additional funds, HACE sought and received accreditation as a national Main Street project last year.

Having poured his heart and soul into the work, Santiago winced when he learned that a member of the tour group from Cleveland had just been overheard saying, "There are the same issues in every city, but this is worse in terms of filth. They ought to put some money together and clean up."

"We had extra crews cleaning this morning," Santiago said with a sigh.

Tikkanen and his family, however, were impressed.

"We're both real estate brokers," said Tikkanen's wife 15 minutes into the tour. "See those for-sale signs on those buildings? They're not put there 'by owner,' but by commercial real estate companies. That's a sign of vibrancy."

The group stopped for lunch at the Isla Verde Café & Lounge, where the members were greeted by goateed drummers in pale blue guayaberas, a few dulcet backup singers, and a traditional Puerto Rican dancer furiously flouncing her layered skirts like billowing red sheets in a hurricane.

"I have no knowledge of their language," said Jokela. "But this is so happy."

A "nice change," she said, from Scandinavian music, which can be "a little dark."

The family picked over the rice and slightly overcooked chicken while Lance Pastrana, the owner, gave the crowd a short history of the neighborhood. The hard times in the 1980s. Unemployment. A fight to save the nearby shopping mall. HACE's leadership. Now 155 businesses up and running, 110 of them on three blocks.

Pastrana treated the group to a round of mojitos ("It's tasty!" Tikkanen said, but restricted himself to only an inch of the drink). Santiago and Tikkanen exchanged business cards.

"Our economy is so depressed because we are so rural," Tikkanen said. "But still, there are a lot of parallels. . . . We don't have a lot of money and people, so you have to be creative."

Then the group set out to visit a music shop with salsa blasting from a four-foot-high speaker on the sidewalk, a dance studio, the damp shell of what will soon be the new HACE headquarters and, finally, a series of community gardens at Second and Palethorpe Streets.

On the way, as the members passed patches of abandoned buildings, cracked sidewalks and empty lots, Maria Rinaldi from Bernalillo, N.M., confided to a colleague, "This is depressing. I expected more revitalization."

But to Gabriella Mossi of the Mount Pleasant Main Street project in Washington, the community's success seemed obvious - and hard to match.

Further along, in front of a line of neat row houses, an organizer from Milwaukee said, "I feel like I'm either in a European city or Mexico, not the U.S."

At 4 p.m., under clammy skies and intermittent drizzle, the members met for an open-air dessert buffet in the Norris Square Las Parceles gardens.

Waiting for them, against the backdrop of La Casita, a storytelling hut painted in colors transported from Caribbean water, ripe mangoes and tropical sunsets, stood two of the elders from the Puerto Rican women's group Grupo Motivos.

"Here," said Iris Brown, "is where you can find Africa and Puerto Rico in the middle of North Philadelphia."

She explained how the community worked to reclaim the gardens from crack dealers. And how children come here to connect with their cultural heritage.

"I can't help it," Tikkanen said. "I get goosebumps thinking of what a great country this is to have all this going on."

Cory, the 15-year-old from Calumet, helping himself to homemade flan, told his mother that even though Michigan Tech, the college near home, is culturally diverse, "it's nothing like this city."

His mother took a deep breath: "I feel he's learned a lot today."