How the election results strengthen Baltimore in the region

While Democrats could not shake Maryland's popular Republican Governor out of his current office, in the Baltimore metro area, two counties flipped from republican to Democrat. the results reflect where the Governor has its base and where his suburban and frequently un-urban policies have found much less resonance.

The big winner: Governor Hogan

Hogan lost in Baltimore City, Prince Georges and Montgomery County but won everywhere else.

In Baltimore City Hogan had 54,136 votes and Jealous had 113,142 (without absentee ballots). In Prince Georges County the ratio was 209,485 to 83,595. In Montgomery County Jealous had 193,887 votes relative to Hogan's 158,573. However, in spite of what many observing demographic change predicted, those urbanized areas were not enough to carry a Democrat into the Governor's mansion. In Anne Arundel (69.2% Hogan) and Howard Counties (56.9% Hogan), the incumbent enjoyed solid leads.

Meanwhile the political geography of the Baltimore region changed quite significantly thanks to three new county executives coming into office in the surrounding large jurisdictions, two of those flipping the office from Republican to Democratic. This has the potential of creating a strong block of somewhat shared values in the heart of our region not known for a lot of regional thinking. In a time of ever increasing metropolitan growth and increasing urbanization worldwide, regional collaboration is more important than ever. Additionally, local government is increasingly expected to jump into the breech when national policies fail or dismantle liberties or environmental protections.

"Johnny O", under 40 and full of ideas for Baltimore County

Reinventing the suburbs

Many experts predict that the suburbs will be tomorrow's ghettos unless they are able to re-invent themselves. The suburbs cannot be sustained and won't be picked as a place to live by the younger generations because they don't over the urban amenities people increasingly expect, at least so the thinking goes.  It stands to reason that a core city with great architecture, parks, art and culture institutions and world class universities would be an attractive partner for jurisdictions which lack most of those assets. None of the jurisdictions around Baltimore City have truly urbanized areas with the exception of Annapolis, Towson and Ellicott City.  Except, in the past the smart collaboration hasn't happened except for small gestures such as Baltimore County's support of some cultural institutions. For the most part it was each for himself, no matter that the shrinking city can offer plenty of development space that the growing counties are increasingly missing. It would be real smart growth to stick jobs and some of the population growth into the core city instead of paving over large parts of outlying farm-fields in the counties, such as the embattled Turtle Run development in Anne Arundel which may have been instrumental in Steuart Pittman's surprise win. There are certainly metro areas in the US, where regional collaboration occurs including even some tax revenue sharing in cases where the development transfers result in revenue imbalances.

Calvin Ball (right) wins Howard County Exec race, Kittleman (left) concedes
in person, a rare gesture in partisan politics

While nobody doubts that Annapolis is a lovely small town, Towson still needs to work hard before anybody would call it a real town, no matter that the mall is called Towsontown. In Howard County there is Columbia and Ellicott City. All of those places are in various stages of seriously reinventing themselves for a variety of reasons. Annapolis has Parole as growth area (which actually is outside the city proper), Towson has an array of aborted plans to make the place really urban and walkable, Ellicott City is struggling how to exist in a flood prone valley, Columbia is midway in a comprehensive strategy of creating an urban downtown. None of these peripheral urban spaces are connected to the core city with any kind of robust transit.

While concentrated development can result in true urbanity and be successful in protecting open landscapes from sprawl these reinventions won't replace Baltimore as a cultural and economic hub. Synergy and collaboration would be much more successful for city and counties than cut throat competition.  One can only hope that the new, young and dynamic County executives will pursue regional collaboration with much more conviction and, hopefully, creativity than the previous crop.

An upset in Anne Arundel County for Steuart Pittman

Without that, they won't be able to compete with the much better planned counties around Washington DC such as Montgomery County (Bethesda, Silver Spring or the mall conversion of White Flint or Arlington County with very active urban nodes around Metro such as Pentagon City, Clarendon,  and Crystal City which was named as a potential place for Amazon.

Regional transportation

Of course, transportation is where the popular Governor is not at all on middle ground but is pursuing the policies of the 1950's, consisting in curing car addiction with enticements for more driving. The new Capital Transportation Program (CTP) diminishes transit to a 25% share, far down from the peaks of the O'Malley era when transit nearly reached parity with the other modes and included significant transit expansion projects.

It is in the area of transportation where the election results and the strong block of Democratic Executives may matter the most. Federal transportation law mandates regional planning organizations (MPOs) designed to coordinate local transportation in an efficient manner. This prevents parochialism in a field in which jurisdictional boundaries are quite meaningless, just as in some other larger infrastructure networks such as the power grid.

Mayors like to say that there is no Republican or Democratic trash, just trash that needs to be collected. This should hold true for transportation as well; sadly, the topic has been very politicized in our region with little chance of a rational discussion about the most effective ways to achieve mobility, access and equity. When MDOT Secretary Rahn was recently asked by City Council member Ryan Dorsey if there was any goal towards a higher transit share and fewer single occupant vehicles, he was told "we don't do social engineering". This term comes straight from the playbook of ultra conservatives like the Koch brothers who describe any attempts of reducing auto dependency or sprawl development as social engineering and "telling people where to live" or how to move.

TIP document prepared by BMC

In that situation the mandated influence of local government on regional transportation comes in handy, especially in a State where the operation of public transportation is heavily concentrated in the hands of the State. Even though the confusing and often overlapping array of plans and control mechanisms coming from regional and State agencies confounds citizens and sometimes even transportation officials, the mandated collaboration between the MD Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the Metropolitan Planning Organization at the Baltimore Metropolitan Council (BMC) provides an opportunity for balance between the very divided opinions about effective transportation. BMC is a representation of all local governments in this region. The change in who will head those up will be felt.

While regional planning has fallen out of favor in spite of continued growth and urbanization it should actually be more important than ever. The results of the midterm election  present an opportunity to strengthen Baltimore City's standing in the region and improve access and transportation at the same time. That Mayor Pugh will be the chair of the BMC this period will further help.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA