Jonathan Storm: Diversifying Pennsauken is Ch. 12's focus tonight

'There are a lot of people who don't know anything about our town other than what they read in the newspaper," says a Pennsauken resident, making a face tonight on WHYY TV12. "You know, the negative stories."

Well, here's a positive story: "The New Neighbors," the second episode of the PBS documentary The New Metropolis, shows how Lynn Cummings and Harold Adams and a host of sensible, energetic, and concerned citizens of all ages, races and ethnic groups have worked to make the old suburb a vibrant, integrated township.

TV, too, seems to get more mileage out of negativity, whether it's the breakup of Jon and Kate, which drew millions more viewers than the original show about their big happy family, or the political screamers on the right and the left who attack each other's heroes with a vengeance but never offer any constructive suggestions for making things better.

Years ago, when Lynn Cummings saw a circle of five "For Sale" signs around the home of a new African American family in her formerly all-white neighborhood, she says tonight, "I was overwhelmed with sadness." And then she decided, "If you want somebody to do something, you've got to do it yourself."

"The New Neighbors," airing at 9:30, is part of a series of little films by documentarian Andrea Torrice extolling the importance of regional land-use planning. It illuminates how citizens, working with real estate agents and against a generation of Federal Housing Administration policies that virtually guaranteed segregated housing, helped to stabilize Pennsauken's housing market with a diverse citizenry.

"You just get to know your neighbors," says Betsy Bottger, as she and her son enjoy one of the two playgrounds within walking distance of her home. "That's the best way to be comfortable with difference and change."

Filmmaker Torrice, currently based in Cincinnati, says the Pennsaukeners are "by far the most amazing people I met" during her journey into what she calls "the first suburbs," aging towns formed after 1900, predominantly after World War II. (People living in 150-year-old communities along the Main Line might take issue with the term.)

With dilapidated infrastructures and shrinking tax bases, a lot of these places are in deep trouble, Torrice argues. Her first film in The New Metropolis series, "A Crack in the Pavement" (airing at 9 on WHYY), looks at towns around Cincinnati.

It's more wonkish than the Pennsauken installment but makes an important point. A lot of America is falling down, and new ideas and new energy are needed to fix it.

They've got a handle on it in Pennsauken, but newer suburbs built on house farms beckon farther out, and there will be no rest.

The New Metropolis may not get the big numbers of Ken Burns' National Parks series or last winter's PBS Jane Austen extravaganza, but it's precisely the sort of thing that belongs in the public TV repertoire, virtually the only place where TV can shine the light on obscure but fundamental issues of American society.

Jonathan Storm:

The New Metropolis:

A Crack in the Pavement

9 tonight on WHYY TV12

The New Neighbors

9:30 tonight on WHYY TV12

Contact television critic Jonathan Storm at 215-854-5618 or jstorm@phillynews.com. Read his recent blog at www.philly.com/philly/blogs/storm.