Ask Philadelphians about the neighborhood where they live and they’ll often praise virtues such as convenience, affordability, a sense of roots in history and a close-knit friendliness.

But they’ll recite an equally heartfelt litany of problems, a list of stubborn woes that accounts in part for the steady exodus that led to the city to have the largest population loss of any major American city in the 1990s. The list includes major concerns that sweep across all neighborhood boundaries - the schools, crime and taxes.

It also includes a host of smaller, subtler defeats and daily pressures that for some residents add up to a sense of embattlement and a desire to escape: graffiti, vacant buildings, unruly neighbors, ethnic and racial tensions, lack of shopping options nearby, a lack of community spirit.

The citizens who discussed the neighborhood issue agreed early on that while schools, crime and taxes were vital issues, they were mainly the province of other workshop groups. The citizens tried to pin down the elements of that evocative but elusive phrase: quality of life. Good schools, safe streets and affordable taxes are pieces of it, but they don’t complete the picture of what binds a good neighborhood together, what makes it work as a place to live.

Less than with the other issue frameworks, the choices they sketched for improving neighborhood quality of life don’t present a clear clash of philosophies. They are about deciding your top priority in a real world of limited resources. This framework also assumes reviving Philadelphia’s neighborhoods is a reasonable goal for city government; there’s no choice that says, in essence, "Let them fend for themselves."

What separates the choices are differing judgments as to the key missing ingredient, the one area the next mayor and council should focus on first and above all others. Proponents of a given choice wouldn’t mind if many elements of another choice were tried - just not at the expense of their priority strategy.

In subtle ways, each paints a different vision of how to solve the central problem: