What does Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and the Bronx’s Arthur Avenue have in common? They’re both considered great streets.

Bronx residents will tell you they already knew that, but not the American Planning Association (APA). Until now.

The 38-year urban planning nonprofit group officially named the busy Belmont strip known as Little Italy one of America’s “Great Streets,” a distinction that helps slowly chip away the nagging image of a Bronx in blight. It’s the first such distinction for the borough.

“This is a big deal,” Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. said at a news conference announcing the honor.

Diaz’s office didn’t quite have much in the way to do with garnering the recognition. That credit went more to office’s behind-the-scenes man, James Rausse, Diaz’s director of capital budgeting who in his private life serves as president of the APA’s regional chapter. With his APA term expiring Dec. 31, Rausse calls news of the honor a nice sendoff.

“I assure you, I assure you that Arthur Avenue won this on its own merits,” Diaz joked of the relationship between Rausse, the APA, and his office.

The tree-lined strip, running between 184th and 187th streets, was one of five streets honored by the APA this year. Others include Sherman Avenue in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Main Street in Ketchum, Idaho, South 24th Street in Omaha, Nebraska, and Main Street in Davidson, North Carolina. Judges based their decision on the street’s “deep sense of community, ability to be walkable, be near transit, be a healthy community,” Rausse said.

On its website, the APA singled Arthur Avenue for its rich history, where “nearly every shop is an institution, passed down through generations of families that have lived in the neighborhood.”

Indeed, Arthur Avenue’s integral draw is its predominant number of Italian restaurants, remaining so for more than a century. Some key sites at the strip include The Arthur Avenue Retail Market and the Enrico Fermi Library and Cultural Center (the news conference was held there). Its demographics have changed some with Albanian and Latinos becoming embedded in the neighborhood’s history.

Business owners and community stakeholders have fought opposition to Arthur Avenue’s mom-and-pop vibe over the years, occasionally squaring off against corporate giants. That included McDonald’s, whose tenure at Arthur Avenue in the 1990s was very brief.

“It was the public that said, ‘You don’t belong here,’” Peter Madonia, chairman of the Belmont Business Improvement District, told the Norwood News. “That isn’t what we want. We want consistent businesses that are family-run and integrated into the fabric of who we are.”