Hidden by the smoke and fire of city politics and obscured by the debate over immediate issues is the real Bangor, a community that has survived floods and fires, the poor judgment of leaders and the occasional ravaging of its rich history to indulge what some view as a mediocre version of progress.

It is easy for people preoccupied with daily controversy to fail to see the broader view of their city and to follow the thread of decisions, events and investments that connects the past with the future. Newspapers can fall into the same rut. Preoccupied with the present: next week’s meetings, imminent budget decisions, personality conflicts, they often fail to put events on a community continuum.

Today, the NEWS attempts to give that kind of perspective to Bangor. Combining efforts in graphics and photography with the work of six reporters, the finished product, “Bangor 1990: Dusk or Dawn?,” breaks down the major components of the city into their dymanic elements, the downtown, parking, the waterfront, housing, the economy, the airport and of course, Bass Park.

Not surprisingly, in this attempt to provide a fresh, objective look at the city’s most conspicuous features and most visible nagging problems, it is possible to find an old path that winds through decisions and policy deliberations that have culminated in the Bangor of 1990.

Bangor is comfortable, but not satisfied. It grows, but without a sense of achievement. It is a solid, appealing place in which to work, to raise a family, to retire to, but it suffers chronic discontent because it feels it lacks glamor.

The city is haunted by the image of its romantic, economically bustling past, but it has no notion of what it is today, or worst of all, where it is going.

The story of one city has a moral for the rest of northern and Eastern Maine. As the centerpiece for two-thirds of the state, a cultural, retail and wholesale center, a transportation crossroads and the seat of state and federal services, people in Machias, Houlton, Millinocket and Rockland can see pieces of themselves in Bangor’s painful progress.

Urban renewal, parking, solid waste, comprehensive planning and zoning are shared experiences. Comparisons between municipalities frequently are awkward and are often unfair, but there is universal concern for changes: in the land and in the use of the water, in the aspirations of people and in the expectations for the economy. How the largest community in the region succeeds or fails in its efforts to adapt to change is a benchmark for the others.

Bangor’s modern story has an epilogue that applies equally to Pittsfield or Ellsworth: Decisions somehow get made. Structures are built or razed. The character of the population changes. But the process of building a city, and a community, never is really finished.