That in itself was a stretch, first because we were assembled that April 23 afternoon in the spacious community room of PNC Bank's Market Street headquarters, and second, well, I once owned a city rowhouse, and you couldn't get 80 or so people into it even if you stacked them.

Still, a group of Brewerytown/Fairmount residents, business owners, architects and I occupied a semicircle of chairs in front of an audience made up of almost similar groups - thankfully, there was just one me - to talk about what we had learned during a "community brainstorming" session two months earlier, on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service.

What we - and I say "we" only because I was there to write a story - did on that bitterly cold Monday in January was come up with ways to improve, through design, the quality of life in a very viable city neighborhood just off 29th Street and Girard Avenue.

That day, the Community Design Collaborative, which has been spearheading citywide efforts to improve the urban landscape, brought designers and residents together to find ways of making it happen.

The idea builds on the work of the two-year-old NeighborhoodsNow "Healthy Neighborhoods" initiative. It uses the collaborative's pro-bono support from city design firms and, in this case, residents involved with the Fairmount Community Development Corp.

I was asked to serve as moderator because, in the words of NeighborhoodsNow deputy director Diane-Louise Wormley, I "get it." It also gave me a chance to tell bad jokes to a captive audience. (By the way, I'm not averse to doing weddings and bar mitzvah parties pro bono, just for that opportunity.)

One of the things I "get" is that appearances can be deceiving.

Some suburbanites might not easily understand what has made John and Flossie Gallagher stay in their Harper Street rowhouse for more than 40 years. Or why 30-year resident Pat Hill spends a good part of her time tending the corner garden oasis she and other volunteers rescued from "dump" status.

They might understand why the Gallaghers and Hill have stuck it out, but it would be harder to comprehend why Suzi Nash or Kendra Gaeta or Matt Wanamaker or Evelyn Sheared - all of whom are young enough to be my children - would choose to live in a rowhouse neighborhood where nonresidents think it's OK to relieve themselves wherever they choose.

Nonresidents do the same thing in Society Hill, on Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill, and in the middle of Center City. Economics isn't at the root of it, just an increasing lack of civility compounded by a growing sense of entitlement.

City living isn't easy. It never has been. I was at an evening event at the National Constitution Center on April 21 where emcee Jerry Blavat was lecturing the crowd about a time when neighbors kept kids in line by threatening "to tell their parents."

Was there ever such a time? Maybe there were some kids who listened. I sort of did. My friend Dominic? Not as much. The kid we called "Elvis?" Not at all. "Charlie the Fist?" He was the first kid from our neighborhood to do a stretch in state prison.

The other newspaper publishes a column called "In the Line of Duty," honoring Philadelphia police officers who lost their lives while on the job. If you read it regularly, you notice that most of the officers were shot to death by teenagers robbing houses and stores, or during raids on gambling dens or bawdy houses. From what I read, these were almost weekly events between 1900 and World War II in Philadelphia, so obviously not a lot of kids historically have heeded neighbors' threats.

The 2900 blocks of Harper and Cambridge Streets are as far from nirvana as my 18-year-old son is from retirement. Yet everyone - from the newest to the most senior resident - is working to make things better.

In this case, it's an equal partnership between those who live there and professionals making their expertise available, along with a small amount of money, to make lots of little alterations that will add up to a really big change.

That's what life is all about.