Historically, neighborhood identities run deep in Baltimore, and while that adds to the city's charm, it can work against building the kinds of connections the city needs to reach its full potential.

In an era where the Internet has spawned virtual communities more prevalent, accessible, and even more meaningful to city residents than their actual neighborhoods, I worked with a group of students from the Baltimore School for the Arts and their photography teacher, Merlyn Rosenberg, to examine the disconnect and interconnectedness of Baltimore's neighborhoods and people.

The light rail system, a major connector of people and communities along Baltimore's north-south axis, became the students' "base camp." They traveled within the city limits from Mount Washington to Patapsco Avenue and took photos at each stop. They noticed that some communities a mere stop apart remained disconnected in almost every other way. Some stops seemed to be nothing more than parking lots and transit centers with little housing or stores in the vicinity. They wondered if cheaper, more reliable public transportation would enable more of us to get around, venture beyond the absolute necessities of daily life-home, school, and work-and uncover more of the city's secrets and opportunities. The students spent a good deal of time in Westport, finding themselves particularly inspired by its eerie, industrial emptiness. This lower-income, largely industrial waterfront community west of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial/Hanover Street Bridge will soon be the focus of major redevelopment-its past and future are coming face to face.

While the students fanned out through the neighborhood, capturing images, I sought out local community leaders. Ruth Sherrill, president of the Westport Community Association, has memories of her neighborhood being ignored by elected officials for years while other waterfront communities prospered. When I spoke with her and another longtime resident, Elizabeth Arnold, they explained that they looked to the adjacent Mount Winans and Lakeland neighborhoods to build a consensus for future economic and community development projects, but they remain suspicious that there are people and city officials with private agendas trying to divide their community. They hope the impact of a planned Westport revitalization slated for the near future-condos, apartments, and townhouses, along with offices and stores-will extend beyond the waterfront and spur the development of a badly needed multi-purpose community center. Linda Towe, executive director of TOOUR (Teaching Our Own Understanding and Responsibility)-an umbrella group covering Westport, Mount Winans, and Lakeland-sees the addition of new homes and shops along the waterfront as helping to rid the area of blighted properties, but at the same time she wants to ensure that homeowners don't get displaced.

Baltimore is slowly regaining some of what it lost in the last five decades, including a third of its population. While diminishing federal funds were channeled to a few high-profile projects, Westport and most of the other 250-some neighborhoods the city claims were left to fend for themselves. Some of those neighborhoods hung on, but other communities, especially those contrived after World War II, began to lose their glitter quickly. Large sections of the city deteriorated and still include a lot of people disconnected from work, living wages, and stable housing. In 1992, the new light rail line put the names of Westport and Cherry Hill on the city's new transit map and some residents of these communities felt more connected and welcomed their easier access to modern public transportation. In recent years, new pedestrian-friendly streets, long promenades, and urban trails are helping to connect even more of Baltimore's distant and diverse communities. Perhaps someday soon we'll see fast MTA-operated water buses supplementing or replacing the current water taxi system and moving tourists and working people more efficiently between the city's growing waterfront communities.

Just east of Westport and Cherry Hill are Brooklyn and Curtis Bay, where I have worked for thirty years. Separated geographically from the rest of Baltimore City by the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, and from each other by attitude more than anything else, Brooklyn and Curtis Bay are now stirring with anticipation as the planned Masonville Cove Project is about to begin carving out a nature center, an environmental education center, and walking trails in the midst of the industrial shoreline.

For years, many residents in this community felt short-changed on city services-disconnected and forgotten. "It became almost like a mantra," says Richard Anderson, board president of Baybrook, the Brooklyn and Curtis Bay community development corporation. Anderson likes to tell the story of the little neighborhood girl who got lost in another part of town. When authorities asked her where she lived, she replied "Brooklyn." Their immediate reaction was to call the NYPD to try to locate her family.

Brooklyn and Curtis Bay community leaders finally decided that maybe Baltimore had taken this neighborhood identity thing too far for its own good. Encouraged by Senator George W. Della Jr. and Delegate Brian K. McHale, they formed Baybrook in 2000 as a 501(c)(3) and started going after resources as one contiguous neighborhood rather than two. They got some attention from government agencies and private foundations, and in 2002, the coalition was able to hire staff, which makes all the difference in a community where the leaders are working forty hours a week or caring for children and family members. They organized family events in neighborhood parks with marvelous views of downtown and planned housing fairs to showcase the diversity of styles and attract buyers.

We live and work in this giant checkerboard with its more than 250 neighborhoods, each of us only one or two spaces from some community in the grips of the tragic urban trio of crime, poverty, and racial prejudice. Yet a multitude of community organizations and outward-looking people persevere. They work to repair communities like weavers mending the urban fabric. They remind us about those being displaced, unable to keep up or ride the wave of progress. They also realize the value of connections, looking outside their neighborhood boundaries to join others and make their case or better their situation. Let's hope enough of us are listening.

-Ivan Leshinsky