Sparkling and Blighted, Convention Cities Spotlight Ignored Urban Issues

(July 17) – It was a sparkling scene of urban renaissance: Children scampered through the fountain in Public Square, spruced up at a cost of $50 million just in time for the Republican convention here. Electricians installed security cameras on the redesigned plaza as carpenters put the finishing touches on a new cafe. Twenty minutes south, in a neighborhood called Slavic Village, Robert Smith and David Rajecki, both 58-year-old disabled factory workers, surveyed a vastly different scene. Historically a bustling center of Czech and Polish immigrant life, Slavic Village was sliding into decay even before it was devastated by the foreclosure crisis.