A vision for Baltimore (Part 1 - Successes and Questions)

Recently I concurrently reviewed the Morgan State Capstone thesis work by Nicholas Chupein about the JFX removal plans titled "Windows of Opportunity" and a new, not yet published book by internationally known architect V. Chakrabarti titled "The Architecture of Urbanity - Designing for Nature, Culture, and Joy".  This inspired me to think about what Baltimore would look like if one combines those two aspirations. 

Success story Oriole Park: Can it be replicated? 

Baltimore- What comes to mind?

Baltimore could use some windows of opportunity and some more joy. Those terms probably don't come to mind when one thinks about Baltimore. More likely: Gritty, authentic, historic, shrinking, traffic, race, crime, poverty, addiction, disparities, redlining, diversity, Johns Hopkins, John Waters, The Ravens and the Orioles, the harbor, crabs,  Old Bay, pretty architecture and yes, always "the Wire". The list has good and bad for sure, but the associations lack a clear direction, especially not a trajectory to a bright future, in short, there is no "vision"..

Before we go to the "windows of opportunity" coming from highway removal as addressed in the planning student's thesis, let's look more broadly what windows Baltimore has already opened and how its rich architecture translated into joyous urbanity in the past.

Resting on laurels

Baltimore had a series of strong mayors, including McKeldin, Schaefer, O'Malley and Schmoke who tried to seized opportunities ("The Baltimore Renaissance") and enacted numerous joyous urbanity events such as City Fair, Artscape, AFRAM, Hon-Fest and Pride. 

However, for quite a few years the City has dropped off the lists of leaders, trailblazers, or innovators where the likes of Joe Riley (Charleston) Tom Murphy (Pittsburgh), Michael Bloomberg (New York)  Enrique Peñalosa (Bogota),  Anne Hidalgo (Paris) or Mike Duggan in Detroit have had or still have a permanent perch on that list. New type festivities such night markets and light festivals came to Baltimore late and then faltered. The last pieces of national noteworthiness were the Inner Harbor, Camden Yards, O'Malley's Citi-Stat and a series of successful Health Commissioners. All this now dated, the shine has dimmed and major overhauls are needed. For more than a decade Baltimore has made the national news more frequently for negative records than leadership. Under Armours ambitious plans for Port Covington briefly made national waves even as a potential home for Amazon, but was rejected and then massively scaled down.

Some would make the argument that such top-down leadership and those grand projects aren't really desirable and appropriate in a time that calls for environmental justice, equity, resilience and healthy neighborhoods. Successful cities and Baltimore's trajectory show that it takes all to succeed: Leadership, catalytic projects, healthy neighborhoods and equity. Without a clear vision the activities of city department don't align, priorities are not obvious and communications is muddled. As a result the city goes everywhere and nowhere, maybe sideways or even backwards, in the end no-one benefits. 

There have been times when Baltimore was the second largest city in the US and known for global innovations such as the first passenger rail line, the first gas street lights and was filled with national enterprises. Charm City's architecture is still testimony to those better days. Deindustrialization has hit Baltimore hard and the successes of today are, indeed, not always physical. For example world leading higher education and health care institutions (ed and meds). Still, unlike some of its peers such as Cleveland, St Louis and Cincinnati, Baltimore has not been able to stem population loss and huge disparities.

How transportation shapes a city

On highways, specifically, Baltimore has a mixed record. Yes it defeated some highways and exactly those neighborhoods that were spared, Federal Hill, Fells Point, Canton, Dickeyville, Hunting Ridge are today's most walkable, connected and attractive ones. But in many parts the traffic engineers had the upper hand with the JFX, Druid Lake Park Drive, the Fallsway, the Orleans Street viaduct, the Russell Street viaduct, I-395 and the infamous highway to nowhere. Space that the streetcars freed was shamelessly converted into pavement, ruining once glorious streets like North Avenue in the process, not to mention the relentless one way system that converted even smaller streets into traffic sewers. All these anti-urban moves present "windows of opportunity" today.

As for its urbanity, Baltimore's DNA isn't derived from plans by Pierre L'Enfant as in the case of its famous sibling to the south, or by William Penn as in Philadelphia to the north. But the 1904 regional green plan by the Olmsted brothers isn't shabby either and that period left us marvelous parks and a number of grand civic gestures such as City Hall, the BMA and Penn Station. Olmsted's ideas and parks live on in Baltimore's Green Network Plan and there are big plans at least for Penn Station, if not for City Hall. Especially with re-thinking urban transportation many aspects of the Olmsted Plan can be revived. 

Success story: Art as incubator (MICA college)

So many projects and plans

So what would it take to again catapult Baltimore to the forefront of innovative successful cities? 

There is no lack of plans. Plenty of short-mid and long-term -plans have been prepared, especially for transportation, redevelopment and the never ending task of getting rid of vacant homes. Some are actually well underway, they just never line up like magnets to create a powerful pull. In a diverse city there are many divergent interests and aligning projects to create a larger force isn't easy. Just think of the list below and how each of those set of plans and projects have their detractors who rather wish those investments away.

Success story: Health institutions Hopkins & UMMS

• EBDI (nationally the largest sustained place based redevelopment according to the Urban Institute)
• Port Covington (Baltimore Peninsula) also initially conceived as one of the largest developments in the country now with the Insulator factory redevelopment which is well underway
• Perkins-Somerset: Well underway and in parts completed
• Madison Park (Reservoir Park)
• The Uplands (stalled after a completed phase 1 and recently revived)
• The Frederick Douglass tunnel (in progress with small scale construction started)
• The Penn Station restoration and redevelopment (small steps are completed)
• The Park Avenue redevelopment (under construction)
•  HarborPoint (the former Allied site) underway but nearing completion and build out
• Canton Crossing (underway but largely completed)
• Yard 56 (in progress but largely completed)
• Sharp Leadenhall and South Baltimore (many completed apartment buildings and some entertainment venues)
• Locust Point and the Key Highway developments
• The expansions and new construction at the campuses of Johns Hopkins, UMM, Coppin and Morgan State (largely complete)

There are even more big plans that exist mainly on paper and may never happen, each of those equally controversial:

Success story: Higher education (Morgan State University)

• The Red Line east-west light rail line (unfunded but back in planning and design)
• The redevelopment of Pimlico (mostly a concept on paper so far)
• La Cite's Poppleton Plans (stalled and in litigation)
• The Old Town redevelopment
• The removal of the lower JFX in favor of an urban boulevard
• The redevelopment of HarborPlace (requiring approval of a charter change and funding)
• The Convention Center expansion and the mixed use development between Oriole Park and the Ravens Stadium (not designed, not funded)
• The Middle Branch waterfront parks plan funded in part from casino revenues (underway)
• Downtown Rise, a vision for downtown
  

  

  Success story: Development of formerly fallow industrial
  spaces (Harbor East, Allied Signal, Canton Crossing)

  
  

Plus policies that are supposed to revert past planning errors or injustices such as 

The removal or mitigation of the highway to nowhere 

Inclusionary zoning,  

Complete streets policies,

A Baltimore resilience and climate change plan, and 

Various policies to bring more equity to city investments. 

A Baltimore Green Network Plan

A Baltimore Comprehensive Plan (still to be completed)

As noted, without focus and vision, the jumble of plans will remain more confusion than guidance. But before there can be a vison, there needs to be some consensus what the objectives are.

What is progress?

But what is steady progress? People can't even agree on whether Baltimore got any better in the last 30 years. 

A Baltimorean who would have left the city in 1994 would barely recognize large sections of the city if he returned today so many large scale investments are there across most areas of the city. The Rotunda, Charles Village, Remington, Johns Hopkins Hospital and EBDI, the MSU campus, Greektown and Canton Crossing, Sharp Leadenhall, Locust Point, Key Highway, Mulberry Street in downtown, or North Avenue in Station North or west of Walbrook. Much of these include many new housing units.

Still there is a housing crisis.The suspicion against large projects is there for a reason. Truth is that massive physical transformations with lots of new housing have not abated the bleeding. Yet, most would agree that Baltimore today appears to be physically much improved since 1994 even in Sandtown or on North Avenue. Social ills can't be addressed without sound physical spaces, so is there at least a sound foundation?  

Limited success: re-investment in redlined areas (Walbrook Junction)

Who is the culprit?

Why didn't all these developments result in a growing, prosperous, joyous and confident city on a forward thrust? 

Giving answers to that question is a favorite Baltimore pastime. The lack of vision and focus was already mentioned.

Simplistic answers are usually wrong when it comes to complex questions, but that doesn't stop residents to offer them, ranging from incompetent mayors to corruption, high property taxes, too much police, not enough police, bad schools, greedy developers, the digital divide, capitalism in general, and lately even bicyclists, to name just a few. 

Many of such answers are ideologically motivated (too much government, not enough government etc.), some racist, most are not based on facts or they sometimes come from suburbanites who actually know very little about the city. After the cherished traditional home town paper the Sun fell into the hands of the Sinclair Owner of Fox 45, cutting the council in half or throttling Baltimore's  income down in a sudden spurt of tax cuts has been added to the false set of the silver bullets. 

There isn't a scientific study that would give a convincing answer to the question why Baltimore is languishing, is the only major shrinking city in the East of the US, has the highest addiction rates in the nation, and in spite of recent progress, is still listed in the top ten cities when it comes to murders per capita takes many Abell Foundation reports to better understand and still remains a puzzle. 

Limited success: Starter homes in Druid Heights: Can it be scaled up?

Focus on a new transportation paradigm and connections

In keeping with the question of focus and vision, let's return to the  two motivational documents of "windows of opportunity" derived from highway removal and the joyous city that comes from connections and Chakrabarti's concept of  "connected design". 

What could a Baltimore look like that would systematically implement a new transportation paradigm and a consistent application of connectivity instead of separation? Together these guardrails should result in a pretty clear vision for Baltimore, to be laid out in a sequel to this article.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA