Olga Diaz has turned out to be a nice breath of fresh air on the Escondido City Council.

While some were concerned (understandably, given some of her campaign rhetoric) that she might turn out to be a polarizing figure -- a mirror image of Marie Waldron (only on the left) -- she has proven to be fairly pragmatic in her voting while remaining idealistic in her visions for the city.

Since her election in November, Diaz has defied public employee unions in voting to cut benefits, has sided with Waldron ally Sam Abed in seeking more info on possibly relocating the city library to the arts center museum, reached out to In-N-Out about bringing one of their burger restaurants to town and has called for beautifying the city's concrete creek channel.

Nothing groundbreaking in any of this, but Diaz has combined her independent voting with a boundless optimism about the city that has been missing since, really, June Rady was on the council half a decade ago.

Some of her critics have made fun of Diaz's proposal for the creek channel, but pie-in-the-sky dreams help shape a community's self-image. If we simply throw up our hands and say Escondido can't change, that its eastern core will always be a concrete jungle, then you know what? That's exactly what will happen.

So having one of our City Council members dream big for our city is something the rest of us should embrace, even if we don't always agree with everything she proposes.

Frankly, a greenbelt riverwalk would be a huge improvement over the concrete spillway that passes for a creek in Escondido.

Which isn't to say it is feasible now -- not when the economy is in the tank and the city is hurting.

But how we talk about the future of Escondido can't help but shape how that future will turn out -- and if we're talking about greenbelts and a library integrated with the arts center today, we're more likely to see those kinds of positive developments 10, 20 or 30 years down the road.

The defeatist talk so in vogue these days -- that Escondido is too urbanized to ever be a nice place to live, that the gangs and crime have taken over, blah blah blah -- can also, unfortunately, shape the future.

We need to be realistic, yes, about what Escondido is today -- that parts of it were overbuilt in the 1960s and '70s, and that high-density development has led to problems in fighting gangs and crime.

But we also need to be realistic about what we want Escondido to be like for our kids and grandkids -- and negativity isn't synonymous with realism.

I like Diaz's vision of a rejuvenated Escondido a whole lot better than the urban hell some of her detractors hold out as unavoidable.

If we take her proposals seriously, and find sober ways of making them happen over time, then that positive vision is every bit as realistic as that of the naysayers.

Contact staff writer Jim Trageser at jtrageser@nctimes.com or (760) 740-5408.