Excerpted from GoLocal24's "Digital Diary'' column.

Congratulations to downtown Warren, R.I., for being named one of “America’s 5 Great Neighborhoods’’ by the American Planning Association for the town’s “foresight, innovation, and cooperation” in building a better place.

It has always seemed to me a bit of a miracle that downtown Warren has been able to maintain its shops, restaurants and other signs of being a healthy old-fashioned, pre-mall downtown. That Warren is not a rich town and that its downtown is not an all-too-precious place like, say Stockbridge, Mass. (where Norman Rockwell worked) or Nantucket makes it all the more attractive.

-- Robert Whitcomb