Walking through the Strawberry Mansion section in North Philadelphia is quite an experience. You can see hints of a very different world from the past in the ornate row houses and avenues. There are so many details on these brick that call out the amazing craftsmanship from another era. Inside many still have beautiful ceilings, and here and there one can still find the original leaded stained glass panels above the entrance doors. The houses usually have hardwood floors, high ceilings, and stairs with wooden balusters and hand rails...

Stop! This sounds almost like a description of the houses in Philadelphia's Society Hill section? Maybe so, but only because I left out a few details. Society Hill and Strawberry Mansion are both romantic names hinting at a glorious past, and, in terms of geography, they're actually only 4.5 miles apart. But in terms of everything else, they might as well be on different planets.

Let's compare and contrast: most green spaces in Society Hill are meticulously maintained flower gardens, while most green spaces in Strawberry Mansion are garbage strewn and overgrown vacant lots, left open as gaping sores wherever the city has torn down a derelict house. Society Hill has solar-powered high-tech garbage compactors, and cleaning crews from the City of Philadelphia ensure that nothing is left in the streets. In Strawberry Mansion you will be hard-pressed to find even a simple wire-mesh garbage can, and there are no City crews cleaning up the garbage-strewn streets. Sure, there is garbage collection once per week, but that doesn't take care of the mountains of trash in and around the abandoned buildings and vacant lots.

If you live in Society Hill, you can enjoy a late-night stroll home from one of the many Zagat-rated restaurants through quaint, quiet, and well-lit streets. And trust me, it's especially nice on a warm evening in June. Strawberry Mansion, on the other hand, is one of the more dangerous areas in Philadelphia — a city that earned the nickname "Killadelphia" in 2007 when an average day would see one murder and four shootings. So aside from the fact that there are no Zagat-rated restaurants in Strawberry Mansion, a leisurely stroll home after dark may not be a wise thing to do.

In Strawberry Mansion poverty is everywhere. It's an ugly, dirty, mean, overwhelming, and paralyzing in-your-face urban poverty. Life here is hard, and everything is much more difficult and inconvenient. Poverty and violence affect every aspect of daily life to such a degree that the term "quality of life" is essentially meaningless — there is only "life." The really sad part, though, is that Philadelphia has many sections like Strawberry Mansion, but only a few sections like Society Hill, and this is a pattern that is repeated all over urban America. Why is that?

It's hardly an invisible problem. Even passengers on the high-speed Acela trains need to go through North or South Philadelphia on their way to business meetings in shiny Center City skyscrapers. Why is there no outcry when we subsidize and build enormous multi-million dollar sports arenas, but find it impossible to scrape together the funds necessary to improve these poor neighborhoods even a little bit?

There is one public pool in Strawberry Mansion were kids from the entire neighborhood come to play on hot summer days. This year it closed in August, well before the schools started and just when it got really hot. Why? Well, most likely because that's when the funds ran out, or because of poor planning, or both. The effects of poverty, of course, also spill over into everything else. For example, the schools in this area are chronically under-performing due to myriad problems, many of which hardly (if at all) exist in affluent neighborhoods. It's also much more difficult to find good quality groceries, because there are almost no supermarkets. Most shopping is done in so-called corner stores with limited (and often questionable) selections.

Services that one would take for granted in an affluent neighborhood, such as easy access to banks, post offices, doctors, and dentists, are hard to come by in a neighborhood like Strawberry Mansion. There you will be hard-pressed to find a bank-owned ATM, and it's near impossible to find a bank branch. However, there are quite a few check cashing stores and some 3rd-party ATMs, all charging high fees for even the most basic services. In an affluent area, one would simply go to the next ATM or bank branch. But in poor neighborhoods, there is no choice.

Fixing inner city blight is like trying to save ugly animals from extinction.

In Philadelphia, like in many other large urban areas, very few miles separate families that hire coaches and consultants to help Johnny select the most appropriate college or University, from families that cannot even afford a $20 mandatory school uniform for Lakeisha. No, those names were not selected at random, and yes, I am suggesting that the element of race plays a big role in this discussion. What is even more tragic, though, is that fighting poverty in urban America is not only just one of many causes competing for attention and funding, but that it often is outranked by many trivial interests.

Fixing inner city blight is like trying to save ugly animals from extinction. It's well known that to raise funds and awareness for cute abandoned fluffy puppies, is easier than for a near-extinct slimy slug. Conversely, helping weepy-eyed children with flies in their eyes in some foreign country is easier (and probably has more caché) than helping kids in drug-infested poverty-stricken violent neighborhoods in our own cities. A harsh statement? Definitely! Is it true? I'm convinced that it is. The point here is not that one cause is more noble or more worthwhile than the other — it's an observation. But it does seem to me that we find it easier to overlook problems that hit too close to home, and would rather focus on very big and nearly abstract causes such as "ending world hunger." But doesn't "world hunger" also include the inner city poor?

Focusing on inner city problems first requires acknowledgment of there being a problem (which probably is difficult to swallow for us living in the richest nation on earth). A case in point: New Orleans, LA. It took hurricane Katrina, a stunningly inept FEMA, and wall-to-wall live TV coverage to open America's eyes. Maybe we don't think that the inner city poor deserve help. After all, they live in the same country as we do. Don't they have the same opportunities? The same access to services? The same access to education? Yes, I know, life is not fair. But there is no level playing field here — the game is rigged!

So, what's the answer? I guess there is no easy answer. There are a million and one reasons (ranging from historical to political, from coincidental to intentional, and more) as to why there is urban blight. The real answer is that there is only hard work (lots of it!). And by the way, it does affect us all, even if we live in affluent neighborhoods, quaint suburban communities, or small faraway rural towns. Poverty, despair, and crime have a tendency to spread like cancer. So shouldn't we fight the root cause, rather than forever trying to just band-aid the symptoms?