I admit it. I get irritated easily.

This is not a character flaw. Getting annoyed with stupid ideas and wrong-headed decisions actually helps me do my job pounding out five columns a week for this paper.

So when Donna Skelly, a Hamilton city councillor, insulted Waterloo Region's hard-earned light rail transit project a couple of weeks ago by calling it "ugly" and "not attractive," I was ticked off.

What I thought about Hamilton (when I thought about it at all) could be summarized by two images: Smoke-belching steel mills polluting the harbour, and a decaying, troubled downtown.

Who was Skelly to talk about ugliness?

"It is beyond ludicrous for anyone from Steeltown to insult any other place's appearance," I wrote.

And . Wham!

Proud Hamiltonians rose up to defend their city. Photos of lakes, waterfalls and sunrises in Hamilton popped up on social media, along with sharply worded criticism of my stereotypical viewpoint.

Skelly never got back to me. But another Hamilton councillor, Matthew Green, took a more constructive approach.

He wanted to change my mind and offered to give me a tour of his city. I accepted.

We started at the waterfront, part of which is in his ward.

Empty lots owned by the city, with the infamous Stelco mills nearby, give the area a desolate look.

But things are happening, Green said.

He showed me the plans for pretty low-rise homes in the area, with a tree-lined community trail along the waterfront. Social housing for low-income people would be included in the development, he said.

Then we went to one of his favourite places in the city, Gage Park with its intricately sculpted fountain, green expanses of lawn, and flowering trees. "You forget that you're in the city," Green said.

Hamilton has many of the same pressures that Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge do. As housing prices soar in Toronto, buyers look for relief. They're picking up homes further away, in Hamilton and Waterloo Region.

That has driven prices up in those places too. Green worries about poor people being pushed out of their neighbourhoods in his city.

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Lots of urban planners have embraced the idea of cities encouraging the "creative class"- knowledge workers, media professionals and artists - and providing them with high-end restaurants and elegant condos.

But Green sees another side to that. It creates a situation where "cities have to compete against each other to be cool and hip, rather than create regional co-operation," he said.

Another politician trying to show a stranger the beauty of his city might have avoided the poorest part of town, with its boarded-up windows, payday loan shops and some buildings in an advanced state of urban blight.

To his credit, Green took me right to the heart of it, confident it would reveal something beautiful.

A caf�, 541 Eatery & Exchange, had been set up by an anti-poverty non-profit organization, similar to the Queen Street Commons in Kitchener.

Volunteers make the food, so it is cheap. The space is welcoming to everyone. If you have plenty of money, you can pay extra to sponsor another person to have a meal or a hot drink. The extra cash is quickly used up each day.

"It's a social place, a gathering spot," said poverty reduction activist Tom Cooper. "Everybody deserves to enjoy good food in dignity."

I agree completely.

It's easy to judge a place, as I did, by the view that outsiders get.

But the struggle for human dignity takes place on an individual scale. You have to be right on the block to see it.

When there are as many helping hands for that struggle, as there are in Hamilton, it is a beautiful thing to witness.