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| Charlie Duff (SUN photo) |
Another big player in the offing may be public health, at least if the Corona virus continues its march towards becoming a global pandemic. Baltimore with its top notch hospitals should be a good place to be in that case, but that may not be true for all. Disasters only look like equal opportunity destructors, but in reality they hit the poor way harder than the wealthy who have many more choices for prevention, avoidance, treatment and mitigation of whatever economic damage. As a starkly divided city Baltimore would need extra diligent governance, should the epidemic strike here. In spite of a string of exceptional health comissioners good governance hasn't been Baltimore's strength for quite some time. Charlie Duff's statement that "I have never known the machinery of city government to work so poorly" is already a pivotal issue in the campaign (think crime, police overtime abuse, water meters) and could become all deciding should the city bungle its response in the case of an actual Coronavirus threat.
Meanwhile we will continue the series of interviews with Baltimore stakeholders and opinion leaders from various walks of life. As emphasized before, this series is not intended to be representative, even though efforts have been made to offer this forum to a wide spectrum of representatives.
This time Charles Duff is responding to our questions about the City and the election. Charlie Duff is known to many in Baltimore through his numerous lectures about all kinds of things Baltimore. Most recently he wrote a book titled "The North Atlantic Cities" in which he explores the question why Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston are rowhouse cities while other cities are not.
What do Amsterdam, London, Dublin, and Baltimore have in common? They are part of the great family of the world’s rowhouse cities, of course! (Duff lecture announcement)Duff is someone who defies the silos of special expertise that often prevent people to see the bigger picture. Not Charlie. He always looks for the bigger explanations, even if he has to invent them himself at times. His experience as developer, training as planner and careful student of Baltimore’s architecture and development, has made him a vessel of vast amounts of practical and theoretical knowledge, a rarity in modern times. In nineteen years as Jubilee’s President, Charlie has initiated and overseen the rehabilitation or construction of houses and apartments for thousands of Baltimoreans. Charlie is a great story teller and has given many lectures on architectural history at the Walters Art Museum, the Johns Hopkins University and, on occasion of his recent book, in places far outside of Baltimore.
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| Book cover |
Duff graduated from Amherst College and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Charlie Duff
Are you overall optimistic about Baltimore or pessimistic? Why?
I’m optimistic about Baltimore. It has a good location and
a successful economy, and it has dozens of great parts, both city and suburban.
Above all, Baltimore is now full of young people who love it and care
about it – and love it and care about it without illusions. Boston was
like that when I was 25, a run-down old city that smart young people were
beginning to love. Now, 40 years later, those smart young people have
made run-down Boston a great city. That’s happening to us right now.
It’s easy to be pessimistic now, not just because we have been
ludicrously violent for ludicrously long, but because we seem to be responding
to the city’s violence with a sense of powerlessness, like deer in the
headlights. If I’m optimistic, that’s at least partly because I
know enough about Baltimore’s history to know that we’ve had problems of this
scale before and eventually figured out how to get out of them. It wasn’t
easy then and won’t be now, but great cities are resilient. I also know
enough about Baltimore’s history to be immune to the pervasive belief that
Baltimore used to be a lot greater than it is. It didn’t. We were a
mid-sized city when we invented the railroad and the clipper ship, a mid-sized
city when we created the first modern university and turned medicine into a
science, a mid-sized city when we created America’s first great urban
waterfront.
What three issues do you suggest should be the top priority of
the new Mayor?
1.
Making the people safe – from each other and from the police.
2.
Delivering public services efficiently and intelligently – I
have never known the machinery of city government to work so poorly
3.
Beginning to grow the city to 800,000 people – if we set a goal that
is lofty but attainable, we will amaze ourselves with our own creativity in
finding ways to meet that goal
If you were to advise a candidate for Mayor what would be your
best suggestion?
Pursue strategies of growth and equity at the same time.
It’s amazing how many people think it’s enough to aim for one of these or the
other. That’s a false choice. If we don’t seek to grow, we won’t
have the ability to be equitable. If we don’t seek to be equitable,
we won’t have the safety, the labor force, or the quality of life necessary for
growth.
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| Rowhouse City Baltimore (Photo: Philipsen) |
As I listen to Baltimoreans, what I hear, first of all, is that
everyone wants to be safe. After that, however, there’s a divergence
between middle-class people and poor people. What middle-class people
want is good neighborhoods, and what poor people want is living-wage
jobs. Those two desires don’t conflict, and it should be easy for a good
politician to make good politics out of meeting both of them.
What should the next US President should do for cities?
Cities are the best antidote to global climate change, and
climate change is the most important issue over which we have a lot of
control. The next President should tax carbon and invest in public
transportation. The rest will take care of itself.
What recent local fact has given you hope for Baltimore?
The continuing increase in the number of people who are choosing
to live in Baltimore City even though they can afford to live in the
suburbs. We are recapturing the middle-class people we lost in the car-centered
twentieth century. We allowed our city to become far too poor to take
care of itself, and we relied on the federal and state governments to take care
of us; but the federal government has long since given up on this, and the
state is losing interest. If we want to have good schools and safe
streets, parks and clean water, and a growing economy that works for all of us,
we are going to have to think of it with our own brains and pay for it out of
our own pockets.
What recent local fact has depressed you the most?
Our persistent inability to face the crisis of public safety.
Do you support a particular candidate for Mayor and for City
Council?
No. Jubilee Baltimore is a non-profit organization that
works for the people of Baltimore. We work with elected officials,
whoever they are.
What personal contribution to Baltimore are you most proud of?
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| Duff/Jubilee project: The Centre Theatre on North Ave (Photo: Philipsen) |
The revival of Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon is one of the
greatest places in the United States, one of the three or four big reasons to
care about Baltimore. It has block after block of splendid and harmonious
buildings, not to mention dozens of interesting things to do and a fabulous
location. Yet Mount Vernon declined for most of the 20th century,
and it was in such bad shape by the 1990s that it needed the kind of community
development work we do at Jubilee. We worked in Mount Vernon for about a
decade, and we helped to rally some wonderful people to turn the neighborhood
around. The population has grown by 33% on our watch, and good things happen
every year.
I only wish the work were complete. The neighborhood is
about halfway to where it should be. It needs three things: less traffic
on the main residential streets, more buildings and stores along Charles
Street, and more homeowners in the neighborhood’s row houses.
Any final thought?
Baltimore is a
beautiful city with a wide range of buildings and neighborhoods. It has
something for everybody. What it needs is everybody. First,
Baltimore should simply have more people than it has. If our population
were, say, 800,000 people, we would have fully-occupied neighborhoods, vibrant
neighborhood shopping streets, and a good mass transit system. And
Maryland is growing fast enough to make this possible. But Baltimore
should also have more kinds of people than it has. Too many of us are black
or white, and nobody buys black-and-white tvs nowadays. We need a
technicolor mix. Finally, Baltimore should have more people who are
skilled and prosperous. We need to be able to shape our own future, and
that will take money and brains.
Charles Duff bio:
A graduate of Amherst College and Harvard University, he studied at St. Andrews University in Scotland and has walked every city and neighborhood to which he refers. He is a past President of the Baltimore Architecture Foundation and has served on the boards of many community and professional organizations. He lectures widely and has taught at Johns Hopkins and Morgan State Universities.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
Previous Interviews on this blog:
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