May 1, 1988

LEAD: THE city's most-active renovator is bringing back to life a blighted turn-of-the-century railroad complex.

LEAD: When stock prices collapsed in October, program trading was criticized as one of the chief villains in the financial drama.

LEAD: Every Presidential election year provides a forceful reminder that a glass can be portrayed as half empty or half full. In 1988, the battery of figures Republicans are marshaling emphasize what the White House calls the ''significant and good news'' about the economy; Democrats are trying to accentuate the negative.

LEAD: When the audience first meets Pale, the central figure in Lanford Wilson's ''Burn This,'' he is offstage, pounding on a stranger's apartment door, screaming obscenities at an unseen antagonist. It is well past midnight and Anna, the female character in Mr. Wilson's play at the Plymouth, looks confused and bleary-eyed switching on a light and peering through the peephole.

LEAD: Lawrence A. Smiley will be the first Manhattan developer to renovate city-owned shells for low- and moderate-income families as part of a new 421-a tax abatement program. Except he has not yet been shown the buildings. As Mr. Smiley completes work on Lexington Parc, whose 73 market-rate condominiums will benefit from the 10-year tax reduction, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development is still choosing two suitable buildings for the 22 apartments he is required to renovate.