Light as an equity issue

What better time  to think about light than the week of Light City Baltimore? Like much that is taken for granted, upon further inspection, the matter of light is complex whether one looks at it as a basic urban amenity in the streets, or as an accessory to highlight or brand buildings or as a tool of interior design for homes. Much is counter-intuitive, for example that one may see better with less light or that the brighter and whiter lamps of the latest generation use less energy than their dimmer but warmer predecessors. Light is frequently still considered a sign of affluence, certainly of consumerism (Times Square is ground zero for both) but in reality better off neighborhoods tend to be dimmer than those suspected of high crime. Few think of light in terms of equity, and those who do consider the number of broken street lights or the brightness in the street, not the quality of light and how comfortable and inviting it makes a neighborhood at night.

New York City Street at night (Guardian)

Simplistic thinking postulates that crime thrives in darkness and that bright lights are therefore a solution to combat it. Baltimore, deep in the trenches of crime fighting, has long deployed light as a weapon against crime and has flooded crime hot spots with mobile lights bathing whole blocks as if they were movie sets or as if the block had been pulled over and the squad car was now blasting all available lights.

The mayor has determined that certain streets in disinvested communities were too dark and campaigned on thousands additional street lights equipped with bright LED instead of the yellow high pressure sodium "cobra head" street lights that were common for at least 50 years. It has never been easier, cheaper and more enticing to install bright lights. Like with all new technology, there is a tendency to overdo it. Just as wider streets are not necessarily safer, nor a brighter streets. Unintended consequences lurk at every junction: Is it really progress to make the vulnerable neighborhoods as bright as an operating room while the posher neighborhoods savor their darkness with cozy gas lantern replicas? Is it progress when people can't sleep in their street facing bedrooms because misdirected bluish white light messes with their circadian cycle?

The depressing dark hulls of vacant rowhouses

The more technology advances, the more complicated becomes the task of lighting a street, a plaza, a building or a room because of all the choices. Smart lights are programmed to adjust to ambient light and conditions or to how much light is needed depending on activity levels. One of the beaties of natural light (daylight) is its natural variation even in areas where there is hardly a cloud. Morning light is different than light at noon or at sunset. Clouds, of course modify light even further. So far electric light is nowhere near to produce such variation or range of "moods".

 Since lighting can be so much more than it used to be, it is time to consider light as an important design tool and not only as a basic matter of functionality with a binary setting of on and off. Nor is more lighting always better lighting. As anybody flying over the east coast on a clear night can attest, lights have become so bright that it is no problem at all to see them from six miles up. Too much light can be blinding, can make a place feel uncomfortable, can mess with the sleep of people and animals, can distract birds and block the view of the universe. The beauty of a starry night with millions of stars visible with the naked eye has become the privilege of ever fewer people simply because over illuminated gas stations cast their glare for miles.

Different people have amazingly different views of what light makes them feel comfortable. While most people used to having electricity around prefer warmer tones, folks in developing countries where electricity is still novel prefer bright fluorescents. Many Baltimoreans miss the warmer glow of the holiday decorations at the Washington Monument after they were replaced by bright LEDs which can change their colors, but limited to early LED technology, remain in the "cold" range of colors.

The correlation between crime and light is tenuous, correlation doesn't prove causation. Bad lighting can have the opposite effect if it creates glare. Everybody knows the movie cliche when the bright light is directed at the defendant in an interrogation. Savy negotiators know not to place themselves facing the window because they can't see their counterpart's face.

Art installation: Lights inside of vacants (Upstate New York)

Just as too much light can blind, less light can enhance night vision, a somewhat counter-intuitive effect. The natural ability of humans to see in the dark through the gradual dilation of the pupils is blocked by bright light sources, even if they are in the periphery of the field of vision. Bad basket ball court lighting or poorly positioned lights on ski slopes can make exercising the respective sport nearly impossible. Car headlights have become brighter and brighter over time, a vicious cycle, because those blinding lights of  oncoming cars require your own headlights to be bright as day for you to see once the oncoming car has passed.

Far beyond those practical matters, because light can also change emotion and well being it is worh exploring the direct but puzzling relation between emotion, light and the eye's pupil.

For more than a century scientists have known that our eyes' pupils  respond to more than changes in light. They also betray mental and emotional commotion. In fact, pupil dilation correlates with arousal so consistently that researchers use pupil size, or pupillometry, to investigate a wide range of psychological phenomena. (Scientific American)

Even though the scientific correlation between emotion and light remains largely unknown, retailers have long used light to make their stores look "just right". The discounters bright fluorescent ceiling lights are replaced by properly installed specialty lighting in more expensive stores which make the goods look attractive and give the consumer the sense that the goods (and by extensions, they the customers) are precious.

From a psychological point of view, talking about the light is like plunging into the depths of the psyche, but also dealing with the limits and possibilities of the perceptive skills, natural equipment of the human psychophysical apparatus, influencing our health and wellness throughout the life (The Psychology of Light)

the warm glow of historic districts is more convincing
than brightness would be

Even though people generally yearn for the brighter days after long winter nights, and even though humans have a long history of expelling darkness through light, illumination needs to be much more than making the night an extension of the day. Nature doesn't work that way and neither do humans. Architects, lighting designers and the consumers themselves need to take some advice from the book: Dark Matters, a Manifesto for the Nocturnal City. 

So before unplugging all those dimmer lights in the streets and homes and unscrewing every bulb in every room to be replaced with light emitting diodes (LED), its worth considering truly desirable outcomes to avoid the bad results of thoughtless lighting.

As for safety in neighborhoods, it should be less about brightness and more about community pride and identification. The best contribution to safety comes from residents who identify with their community.

A committee of Senator Shirley Nathan Pulliam's Social Determinants of Health Task Force which is now officially legislated through bill SB 444 is looking to improve health in vulnerable communities through lighting. This seemed really far fetched even to the committee members themselves until they looked at an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation tested in Washington State in which not the street lights but the private ones at the front doors of houses were the target. With a few funds neighbors were enabled to fix broken bulbs and lights to brighten up the side-walks leading to a marked uptick on how residents rated their own security and community.  In that program those individual front lights would still be missing on vacant buildings, though, a major problem for Baltimore.

The dark hulls of those vacants depress the minds (and health) of their neighbors in many ways, lighting or the lack of it is only one concern. But there is a model program for this problem as well. An artists' campaign of putting lights into the windows of vacant buildings in upstate New York not only shed a light on the problem of abandonment but also let the affected neighborhoods shine in a new light.  Even though temporary, through feeling valued, it did a lot more for the residents than those mobile lights Baltimore employs for crime prevention. Or as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation discovered, by donating money to give people the resources to install front door lights: To heal a community, build capacity. As for creative ways of using light as a way to make better places, Light City Baltimore can provide ideas.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Let there be night! Metropolis Magazine, 4/2018
Breathing Lights, NY

Related on this blog:

What are the light innovations in Baltimore?

Celebrating light in dark times - "Light City Baltimore"

Dark Skies versus Cities of Light

Scott Plank, the future of Hollins Market and Southwest Baltimore

Is Southwest the next neighborhood in Baltimore to prosper? Washington Boulevard looks better than it has in many years, the La Cite development is sprouting, the largest new residential development west of the Martin Luther King Boulevard  since the redevelopment of Lexington Terrace and the UM Biotech is adding building after building. Bill Struever's Cross Street Partners  is active in the area with the renovated Lions Brothers former livery stable, now a 38,000 sf fully leased office building. As it is typical for any area on the verge of a breakthrough, there are those who are delighted and those who are concerned.

Image of the area north of the market with a future event plaza (Warhorse)

Scott Plank of Warhorse Development has bet a lot of chips on the Southwest with his agreement with Baltimore City to operate the Hollins Market for 15 years and with his investments in the surrounding area. The City would maintain ownership of the market.

If someone white and with the name Plank comes into the area, the camps of delight and concern split even more than they may already split traditionally. Plank moves right into the space of the tragic American race relations for which Baltimore has become an epicenter. To some such investment in vulnerable neighborhoods is the response that many had hoped for after the 2015 unrest. To others, wealthy developers swooping into communities of color is alarming. There is little that bridges those two views.

In Hollins Market those race relations had manifest themselves in the past as tension between  between the merchants and communities along Baltimore Street and north of it and the artsy types hanging out around the Hollins Market. The Sowebo Festival, 35 years old and thriving, is a wonderfully diverse annual affair which unites the communities once a year. The Hollins Market area has seen its ups and downs over the years. Always almost "getting there", meaning a place where there is some vibrancy with restaurants, galleries and event spaces and not too many vacants and then slipping again. One of those downward slides happened when Gypsi's Cafe collapsed during a careless renovation with dishes, silverware and commercial kitchen all condemned and being bulldozed before anything could be retrieved. That was one of those moments when one had to wonder if the City really care about revitalization. But that is long ago.

Baltimore Street, a registered Main Street (Southwest Partnership)

Southeast Baltimore, i.e. the communities of  Barre Circle, Franklin Square, Hollins Roundhouse, Mount Clare, Pigtown, Poppleton, and Union Square have since made great strides towards a unified approach with the creation of the Southwest Partnership which created in 2015 a community vision plan.



Hollins Market and District Hollins Market is the oldest existing public market building in Baltimore and the Market and the surrounding commercial district have the potential to again be a social and economic hub for the community. The Market and existing businesses in the district currently provide residents with accessible food, services, and community space. Increasing walkability, commercial activity, and density and maintaining and restoring the historic character of the Market will restore them to a major economic, nutritional, and
social asset. (Southwest Plan)

Scott Plank is on the long journey of building trust in disenfranchised communities. Last year he finished the remodeling of the Western Police District building in the heart of Sandtown as a community friendly and open facility, a truly tricky task, given the strained relations between police and community. Plank's Hollins Market lease is no small commitment, but "it is much bigger than the market", Scott Plank told me during a brief conversation about the project, referring to the "square" around the market and the questions surrounding the future of retail on Baltimore Street and the area overall. "Much bigger" also means about $6 million dollar already invested in the area in about 60 properties, rowhouses, retail and mixed use as Warhorse Cities CDC development director Jim Mills explains. Trust building includes retaining existing tenants in those rowhouses and assisting them with better lease terms where needed, Mills says. 15 market rate renovated and new dwelling units will be offered for sale shortly.

When asked about the always present concern of gentrification, Mills says that gentrification involves "developing/bringing something in the community that it doesn't want" Mills states, while Warhorse is providing "a rejuvenated market which the community needs so desperately". The company is also owns the Belvedere Square market near York Road and Northern Parkway which it began reviving in 2013 and operates a market in San Francisco. No doubt, conditions in Southwest Baltimore require a different approach. An earlier idea of beginning with sprucing up the square around the market has been tabled for lack of funds. Plank and Mills confirm that they are considering "pop-up" instlallations instead, at least on the north side of the market. The first phase of work will be now a renovation of the market shed. The head-house and the the second floor have to wait a bit longer until more funding is secured.

"Our projects are part of an overarching vision for the revitalization of the greater community" the Warhorse CDC states in some notes put together on occasion of a community meeting this week. "The historic Market is the epicenter of this project, connecting historic neighborhoods like Union Square and Pigtown with the University of Baltimore and 1,000 UMbio Park employees. Warhorse is also partnering with the local James McHenry Elementary and Middle school.

Aside from the complicated sensibilities of Baltimore the Warhorse investment in the Hollins Market relates to the future of Baltimore's Markets altogether, almost all facilities are in play for major change without that any particular "proof of concept" had been tested and proven successful. Cross Street Market will be redeveloped and operated by Caves Valley which presented a new retro design in late December after Warhorse had dropped out of the partnership early in the process, anew approach was also recently announced for the Broadway Market in Fells Point. Across the country the market concept has gained new popularity as food hall, not really a concept, though which adequately addresses the food access and health issues of vulnerable communities in the Southwest. Beyond the future of public markets looms the entirely open question of the future of retail. Baltimore Street, once a thriving retail district still has largely vacant stores. How can the market square and the "Main Street" create synergy? What type retail would work? Certainly, the addition of large amounts of retail space in the La Cite project won't help to create a meaningful concentration and focus.

At the community meeting this week Plank's plans for the 17,000 market were well received. The architect for the renovation is Ana Castro of JRS Architects, the firm which also designed the Western District police station re-make.
Construction is scheduled to begin this fall and last about a year. Potentially the head house area could be used as "swing space" for some existing merchants says Jim Mills.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

SouthBmore.com about Warhorse investments at Hollins Market area

Baltimore market related articles on this blog: 

The future of Baltimore's oldest market
Broadway Markets - an unfulfilled promise (Oct 2017)

The future of public markets (2014)

From Quantity to quality: Is retail coming full circle (2012)

Chaos around Baltimore's Public Markets (4/17)

What Baltimore and Cincinnati have in common (4/17)

How to sway a City Commission

Mount Vernon was all about historic preservation and height limits - until this guy came along: Dennis Richter, resident of the neighborhood, property owner, rehabilitator of various historic properties, soft-spoken and well-reasoned, trusted by the community, someone about whom a neighbor says: "He gives us the best he can". That Richter changed Mount Vernon's narrative would be an understatement, and he will change the community's physical being as well. How is the subject of this article.

Existing historic buildings

The CHAP Mission is to enhance and promote the culture and economy of Baltimore through the preservation of buildings, structures, sites and neighborhoods, that have aesthetic, historic and architectural value.CHAP goals include preserving historic architecture and monuments; reclaiming broken neighborhoods; preventing demolition by neglect; and integrating our City's past into its future. (From the CHAP website)

After initially confirming the historic significance of the current building ensemble, CHAP proceeded in November 2017 to give the developer a economic hardship permission to demolish the historic block which includes Eddies in Mount Vernon. The vote was 9:2. The rules for permitting demolition based on "substantial hardship" are set forth in the CHAP regulations and they are stringent:

From CHAP Rules and Regulations

Proposed development (Ziger Snead presentation, screenshot)

“This was a big hurdle,” developer Dennis Richter told the Baltimore Brew after the meeting. “We’re very fortunate in being able to move forward.” With the hardship ruling the Commission had given away its biggest chip. But CHAP had a say one more time, since the regulations require that it has to also review the design of the proposed new structure.

This Tuesday the commission convened again for this purpose. After having taken the significant first hurdle, one could imagine that the architect and developer would show up with a design that would follow all the rules laid out in great detail in the Mount Vernon Historic District Design Guidelines for New Construction and not try their luck once more.  Again the hurdles are not insignificant. "The Mount Vernon Historic District Design Guidelines must be used for all new construction located within the historic district", the guidelines mandate.

But one could also imagine that the team was emboldened by its initial success and would just continue to push the envelope to see how gullible the historic commission really is. The team seems to have taken that second route when they presented a building that is taller than the guidelines permit.

Proposed project as seen from northwest along Cathedral Street

Having bulldozed the preservation mission of the Commission with the argument that the old buildings wouldn't allow any reasonable development and certainly not one that would be "catalytic" in Mount Vernon, the developer, his architect and a who is who of Baltimore's Mount Vernon historic district put their guns into position once again, this time to fire their way towards approval of a building that exceeds the applicable height by 16% or more than an entire floor, even though the guidelines state "One of the most important aspects of new construction is its height" and lists "Designing New Construction that exceeds the maximum height limits" under "Prohibited". Because of this CHAP's staff recommended for the project "disapproval".  The fact that the project was 116' high in a 100' zone with some equipment being possibly even taller and that the Mount Vernon Design Guidelines were adopted into zoning limit buildings to 100' in the area where the project is proposed triggered staff's "speed camera", they didn't have any other option. There is no leeway in the matter.

Architect Steve Ziger during his presentation

The staffer Caitlin Audette went through the lengthy history of the vehement height battle which the Mount Vernon community had fought for years and which ultimately led to those limitations established in the Guidelines, the Urban Renewal Plan and the new zoning law.

"Exceeding of height limits is prohibited", Audette explained, especially after a 20' height bonus that had been once optional under an 80' limit was in effect had been rolled into a height limit without exceptions or a bonus.

What unfolded after the staff presentation was a spectacle of a special kind and one that brought about the admiration of Commissioner and former UMB law professor Larry Gibson.

I taught appellate argument, it was very impressive how Mr Ziger and Mr Richter argued the case as “de minimis” (Commissioner Larry Gibson)

So what did the presenters do to elicit such praise from the admired lawyer and civil rights advocate?
First, Dennis Richter, the developer, reported that he had held no less than five public community meetings, conducted a field trip to Washington and emphasized how much he responded to community desires since developing his initial designs. As a result, he casually noted that, with the community amenity spaces included in the project, it just got a bit taller. "Yes", Richter responded in his best German accent upon a question form the Commission, "I could build it lower, but then the numbers wouldn't work", at least not "without cheapening the design", especially the expensive facades without which "Mount Vernon wouldn't get what it deserves".

Diagram of the height limits in Mt Vernon

Thusly primed, the next volley against "disapproval" came from Richter's architect. Importantly, this isn't just any architect but Baltimore's most eminent designer Steve Ziger who is most known for his modernist buildings including MICA's Brown Center and the grey zinc panel box at Baltimore's Historical Society in Mount Vernon. Ziger is also an immediate neighbor to the project site with an office on Morton Street. Ziger calmly but eloquently presented a series of slides.

First he agreed with the staff reviewer by confirming that he very much likes "the idea of the rising bowl" (the height limits of the Design Guidelines that step up with the distance from the Washington Monument), a concept he called "valid". He then proceeded to show maps, height diagrams and photos of all the tall buildings in the district constructed before the guidelines and which were "grandfathered". "We cherish them", Ziger said, "because they were well done", subtly putting his design into the league of  buildings like the Belvedere. Like those precedents, he pointed out, his building has a base, a middle and a top, a point CHAP's staff reviewer had already observed.

Ziger explained that his project's 116' height was driven by the elevator, really, because "we didn't want to break the cornice line of the roof."  He than promised "116’ is a hard line, we commit to that", as if 116' was , indeed, the mandatory height limit and not 100'." He repeated how precious the facade materials were, how much depth the new facade would have, how light and shadow would liven it up and how most of the year the 116' building would never cast a shadow on the City Cafe across the street. The fact that "we are right adjacent to the 140’ zone makes a 16’ excess height a minor issue" he concluded coolly, adding: "So we are comfortable" (with what we propose).

Some in the commission, notably chair Tom Liebel, an architect who had voted against the hardship approval, were visibly less comfortable and still fretted about the precedent such a height violation would set. That is when the applicants unleashed their third salvo, a phalanx of the most venerable citizens of Mount Vernon, all testifying in favor of Dennis Richter's character as much as for the project.

Commission Chair, Tom Liebel

First in line was Steve Shen, a local homeowner and volunteer of the Mount Vernon-Belvedere Association, where he chairs its Architectural Review Committee. "Great project, quality design" he said. Then he went into treacherous territory:" What precedent does this set? Each project needs to be evaluated on its own merit", a position in obvious conflict of the long-held position of his association that there need to be rules and predictability, so that not each developer could curry  favor with the powers to be. "The height battle was fought in broad strokes," Shen continued, "we don't want to be like DC where each building looks like cut down with a hedge trimmer", he elaborated and added "context is key. There should be leniency at corner lots and transition areas", repeating Ziger's "de minimis" argument.

It was Charlie Duff of Jubilee Baltimore, "an authority on Baltimore’s architecture and development" and "frequent lecturer on architectural history" (Jubilee website) who as an always great orator provided the crescendo in words which caused architect Ziger to be "moved to tears" as he confessed to Duff after the meeting.

"I was part of the height fight" Duff admitted in his testimony, but height "is not murder, its zoning" he intoned giving the "minimis" yet another twist. "Dennis Richter and his development are doing us a favor" he proclaimed, "they are building a building that is better designed than any building in Baltimore in this millennium. It is doing a favor for the people of Baltimore." Then he paused for emphasis, turned to the CHAP chair, looked him in the eyes and ended with all the gravitas he is so apt to muster:  "To CHAP I say,  it is your opportunity to recognize a remarkable building”.

Commissioner Bob Embry after asking some quite pertinent question regarding the legal standing of the height limits but then offered a quote from the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind", thus giving the Commission a literary out of their conundrum. After that the deliberation of the CHAP commissioners was mostly jovial banter.

View along Cathedral Street

The Commission unanimously approved the design including its height violation. The developer needs to go to the City's zoning board next to get a waiver on insufficient parking and the height. It is easy to see how that board will be swayed.

Should the Historic Commission have voted otherwise? Certainly the project is well designed, certainly it is in the transition to the adjacent height zone of 140' and certainly a $35 million 126 unit building with a large grocery store or food hall will have a bigger economic impact than a refurbished collection of historic buildings housing an Eddies mini-mart. Certainly a tenth floor adds to the economic viability and more units may, indeed, offset expenses on the facade.

The demolition approval due to hardship already skirted hard on the edge of compliance with the three standards set in CHAP's regulations. Dispensing of the height regulations is not within the purview of the historic commission and sets an awful precedent.

The argument that bigger is better because of higher economic viability would be true for any project in any historic district, well designed or not. Applying this logic to a historic district would mean the end of historic preservation, plain and simple. Liking the architect and the developer shouldn't be enough to disregard the rules, no matter that transcendentalist Emerson also said "With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall." Immanual Kant and his categorical imperative would be a better guide, essentially postulating that an ethical decision must be scalable.  And as far as law: Consistency is the great hallmark of a society which submits to the rule of law.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

A streaming video of the session can be found here

See previous articles about the project on this blog:

Misunderstanding historic preservation
Tearing down Eddies in Mt Vernon?

State transportation: Lessons from this legislative session

Pretty much everybody agrees that one of the greatest challenges for the Baltimore Washington Metropolitan area is transportation. As in too much congestion, not enough transit, long commutes and no convincing plans for the future. Employers and employees complain how poor job access hampers economic development and environmentalists and environmental justice advocates agree that poor transportation is a serious equity issue.

lots of harmony in Annapolis.  (Photo: Maryland Reporter)

So how did the Maryland Assembly did on transportation in 2018, now that the legislative session came to an end yesterday? When you look at the local papers, transportation doesn't seem to have been on the agenda. They don't even mention the topic in their list of big wins of this years over 3,000 bills.

On second glance, though, there were some transportation bills and most passed. The tally just lacks the real zingers that would make the public's blood boil.

The biggest transportation impact comes from The Maryland Metro/Transit Funding Act (SB 277/HB 372), a bill that is so complicated that it makes anyone in the Baltimore area yawn except the biggest transit geeks. For one it deals with far away Washington, and two it deals with the "state of good repair", something that becomes only interesting if one gets stranded on a defunct transit line, again and again.  This, of course, is exactly what happened first to the Metro riders in DC and then also to those in Baltimore.

CMTA graphic depicting lopsided transportation expenditures 

Consequently, the bill started out entirely focussed on DC's WMATA and then expanded its scope to include the MTA.  WMATA's needs huge are huge and have been enumerated for some time with a carefully crafted lobbying package of $500 million each year to be scraped together by Maryland, Virginia and the District. Maryland's Governor's entered the deal with an annual offer of $125 million a year. But the bill that passed in the end has Maryland pay a $167 million a year and includes a funding package for MTA and the Baltimore region as well.

For fiscal year 2020, the governor shall include in the state  budget an appropriation from the transportation trust fund for the  operation of the administration that is equal to the appropriation for  the operation of the administration in the fiscal year 2019 state  budget as introduced, increased by at least 4.4%. (b) for each of fiscal years 2021 and 2022, the governor shall include in the state budget an appropriation from the transportation  trust fund for the operation of the administration that is equal to the  appropriation for the operation of the administration in the state budget for the immediately preceding fiscal year, increased by at least 4.4%. (c) (1) for each of fiscal years 2020 through 2022, the governor shall include in the state budget an appropriation for the capital needs of the administration of at least $29,100,000 from the revenues available for the state capital program in the transportation trust fund. (2) the appropriation required under paragraph (1) of this 18 subsection may not supplant any other capital funding otherwise 19 available for the administration. (HB 372 text)

The dynamic of finding at least some balance in the funding request came when  MTA saw itself forced to shut the Baltimore Metro down right in the middle of the initial bill deliberations and when the Baltimore delegation had determined that this region should seek some money as well, even though the MTA did not have a nearly as detailed analysis of their capital and operating needs. The WAMTA bill was amended and with Senator Bill Ferguson and Delegate Brooke Lierman in the lead the MTA will get annual increases of 4.4% and annual capital increases of $29.1 million between FY 2020 and 2022. In turn, the MTA will be obligated to create a detailed needs assessment and the region will prepare a regional transportation plan. The way how the Baltimore region leveraged its way into the bill was a big deal according to Dru Schmidt Perkins, former Director of the 1000 Friends of Maryland, now a consultant who monitored the progress of the bill in Annapolis. There are a number of lessons in this.

• Collaboration works: Instead of fighting over the money, the two metro regions worked together in forcing the Governor and his road enthusiastic Secretary to direct a reasonable amount of Transportation Trust Fund money into transit so that both rail systems can run in a good state of repair. 
• An election year is a good time for a big ask: To his credit, the Governor stayed on board with the bill even after the annual expenditure increased. He is poised to sign the bill and managed to look throughout like a reasonable guy when it comes to transit and not like the transit hater who nixed the Baltimore Red Line.
• Transportation doesn't know jurisdictional boundaries and clearly traverses between Washington and Baltimore, even though the two Metro systems don't connect. 
• Baltimore is in desperate need of a clear road map for transportation that includes some additional transit. After the Baltimore Red Line was taken off the table no significant new rail systems are on the books, even though the Baltimore region continues to grow. 

The initially pretty flatfooted agenda of transportation activists regarding progress in Annapolis was a bit surprising. MTA, for example, has a pretty well defined plan for the long range development of the MARC commuter service (created in 2013), a fairly low hanging fruit, given the importance of the DC to Washington connection and that there are no other big transit projects, if one doesn't want to consider a hyperloop or MagLev serious contenders. Why did investment into MARC per the long range plan not get more promoted?

MARC plan 

Also, given the big theatrics around the issue of transportation metrics in 2016 which the Governor then called a "road  kill bill" and which transportation activists considered essential in preventing that Secretary Rahn would spend all the money in the Transportation Trust Fund on roads and extra lanes, it was surprising the topic totally disappear in this year's session. The 1000 Friends of Maryland made a substantial contribution towards appropriate metrics in this report. MDOT developed its own scoring model here. The methods of measuring the effectiveness of proposed investments is important enough. It deserves its own article.

Lastly, if one looks at Maryland's session in the context of the recently approved federal budget, it is urgent that the State and the local jurisdictions line up  what the major transportation programs should be. Washington left transportation spending programs not only intact but added money. The new federal appropriation bill, enacted March 23, provides over $86 billion for the U.S. Department of Transportation which represents an increase of almost $10 billion over DOT’s  current funding levels. Funding increases spread over road, transit, and rail programs and include programs that seemed in jeopardy such as the Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER), Transit Capital Investment Grants program (CIG), and Amtrak. (source, Smart Growth America)

This region has a big dog in the race. But sometimes one would hardly know it. Hopefully the mandated new regional plan will provide the needed perspective.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

The Jones Falls River, still an undervalued Baltimore asset

Ruin of historic freight station  on Falls Road

Yes, there are two refurbished Mills, a popular Italian beer restaurant, a bike shop and a microbrewery along the scenic corridor of Clipper Mill Road and Falls Road. The corridor is book-ended by blooming Union Avenue in Hampden on one side and the new Nelson Kohl Apartments on West Lanvale Street in the flourishing Station North on the other.

But there are plenty of eyesores as well, chiefly the dilapidated old train roundhouse and the ruin of a trackside freight station building surrounded by trolley carcasses.

The actual jewel of this corridor, the Jones Falls River, runs its course, hidden behind a screen of shrubbery, over rocks and falls only known to those who canoe on it.  The Jones Falls, shadowed in large parts by the viaduct of the I-83 expressway running over top of it since the early 1970s, and banished underground in its final stretch towards the Inner Harbor since 1912, looks in some spots like a wilderness in West Virginia. In short, it is an undervalued and shackled asset which has been waiting for decades to be re-discovered.

161 Jones Falls River Plan 

Luckily, there is now the newly founded group of  the Friends of the Jones Falls, which came together in March of this year, when over 75 people assembled in the Motor House to work on a vision for the river. The event was guided by the Neighborhood Design Center, the Central Baltimore Partnership, Bluewater Baltimore and others.

As Al Barry, a former deputy director of the planning department  well knows, the idea of giving the Jones Falls more prominence has been around for decades. Barry has been part of it for a long time. For example at a daylong workshop in 2001 aiming for a masterplan for the valley. Barry, today a planning consultant, advises the owners of the refurbished mills and the developers of the old Pepsi Plant in the valley is now helping the Friends of the Jones Falls to achieve a break-through.

Baltimore City is a water city. At one time, Baltimore thrived on the Jones Falls Valley corridor. Today, the corridor needs Baltimore to restore what has been broken. Although Baltimore’s past planning projects may not have always been kind to the Jones Falls Valley, as with most things in life, they were part of a learning process. (Megan Griffith, 2012, Treehuggingurbanism)

In fact, the idea of the Jones Falls as a linear park didn't need the New York High Line as a spark. It predates the High Line by half a century. In 1961 "The Planning Council" of the Greater Baltimore Committee published a Jones Falls Valley Plan for the Municipal Art Society and the Board of Recreation and Parks. In its introduction the document says:

“Few Baltimoreans have seen the treasures of nature which lie along the ten-mile Jones Falls Valley. The Valley has long been ‘hidden’ from the view of passers-by. Now, as the Jones Falls Expressway opens up the once-hidden vistas, we are confronted with a great opportunity. The concept of The Valley as a continuous urban Park—a peaceful retreat for city dwellers—has been proposed, hoped for, talked about, for sixty years. Dreams were dreamed, but translation of the vision into reality was always blocked by the lack of a detailed plan and a vivid image of what the Jones Falls Valley could become. Now here is a Plan. From it we can create a marvelous asset for all of Baltimore to enjoy.” (Jones Falls Valley Plan)

Baltimore City failed to act on the big idea, namely it didn't protect and procure the right of way of the old M&PA railroad.

The roundhouse with collapsed front roof today (Photo: Philipsen)

Today the big ideas for the Jones Falls involve the removal of the expressway at least below Penn Station and the daylighting of the stream. very expensive propositions. Again, Al barry with his clients was instrumental in developing those concept plans.

Smaller ideas, such as a Jones Falls Trail and the already noted re-developments have already been implemented. Events such as canoeing on the river or Sundays when one can bike and walk on the expressway to experience what is below outside a racing metal box, have been held for many years. What is missing though, is a transformative project that elevates the Jones Falls status in the City for residents and visitors alike.

There will be sure plenty of ideas coming forth under the guidance of the newly formed advocacy group. A very old one, first proposed by fellow architect George Kastritzky, (the K in the name of the then eminent Baltimore architecture firm of RTKL), would be the use of the historic 1910 Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad (known as the Ma & Pa) roundhouse as the streetcar museum. This idea had been further investigated by Ziger Snead Architects in 2004. Time to dust it off a final time!

Ziger, Snead Architects, 2004 roundhouse plan
(Friends of the Jones Falls)

This roundhouse is another symbol of city government failings. Even though, then Mayor McKeldin liked Kastritzky's idea, the Department of Public Works eventually won out and kept it as an equipment yard. The City has let the structure fall into disrepair since it purchased it in 1958 to store roadside maintenance equipment and salt in it. Four years ago salt had corroded the roof structure so much that the roof collapsed.

In a revival of Kastritzky's idea, the sad looking roundhouse would re-built and become the centerpiece of a rejuvenated streetcar museum. Instead of running from those metal barns further down the street, the museum operated by volunteer streetcar enthusiasts, would run from this refurbished historic structure built for rail vehicles. Its current area could become a park. Instead of running the trains on weekends along dilapidated ruins and turn around at the salt barn wreck, the trains would run the full length of the corridor, from West Lanvale Street behind Penn Station all the way to Union Avenue.  The project wouldn't be run by City DOT or MTA, it would remain a part of the streetcar museum but funded by the major stakeholders along the way, from Ernst Valery's Nelson Kohl which would get unprecedented trail access to David Tufaro's Mill projects to the breweries on the Hampden/Woodberry end of the corridor.

The Jones Falls in its scenic section (Photo: Philipsen)

This year Baltimore's Green Network Plan is coming out in its final form. It should be the year when the 1961 Jones Falls Plan gets implemented and the river finally finally comes out of its shadows.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA


The Jones Falls River Valley Corridor
The History of the Jones Falls, Stanley Kemp, 2016
Baltimore Heritage, the History of the Ma&Pa Railroad and the Roundhouse

The current streetcar museum with 1968 metal barns

The Ma&Pa roundhouse when it was still used by the railroad
Photograph from The Ma & Pa: A History of the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad, George W. Hilton. Courtesy Charles T. Mahan, Jr.

A city fighting for its soul

Thursday this week two people asked me how I felt about Baltimore’s future. One was a young man who had lived and worked here as one station in a multifaceted career  who decided to enroll in planning school in LA and asked me about Baltimore, real estate and social impact development. The other was Robert Tennenbaum on occasion of a reception about his new book about Columbia turning 50, a town he helped Jim Rouse to design.

I responded to both that I was optimistic that Baltimore located in a growing region, close to the nation's capital, with a thriving port, magnificent institutions and located near mountains and an ocean would have to do everything wrong to not thrive in the long run. The usual answer of Baltimore promoters. I added that Baltimore's enormous equity discrepancies offered a special opportunity of being an innovator in overcoming those injustices.

Touting Baltimore at ribbon cuttings: Mayor Pugh and
Developer Valery (Photo: Philipsen)

Thursday the President of the University of Maryland, Jay Perman, Plank's Marcus Stephens, Mayor Catherine Pugh and Downtown Partnership CEO Kirby Fowler promoted Baltimore at the Downtown Partnership's annual "State of Downtown" meeting. "The external brand of Baltimore right now does not reflect the reality. We still have a long way to go and we must evolve the brand of Baltimore to illuminate the truth," Perman said. Which, of course, raises the question what "the truth" is.

This is the week of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King on the balcony of the Memphis Motel Lorraine in front of room 306, a room that reportedly hasn't been touched ever since. Similarly, there are some buildings on North Avenue vacated after the ensuing 1968 unrest which remain unchanged. Baltimore's poverty rate among blacks is also unchanged from the time the Kerner report was issued also 50 years ago. That is part of the truth as well.

Thursday morning at 11:45 a mother and daughter were executed by gunmen in their own home on Gorman Avenue in West Baltimore. The police spokesman would later say on TV that police deals with a "small circle of people which appear sometimes as perpetrators and sometimes as victims", presumably alluding to the fact that the son and brother of the victims was in prison for gang activity. That, too is part of the truth.

This week London, England reached 53 murders. The city of some 8 million is inconsolable that it surpassed New York's murder rate for the first time in memory.  Baltimore's  Mayor told the business leaders at the DPoB Annual Meeting that Baltimore's murder rate for the year is down 23%. The tally for 2018 is 63.

Tywonda Petty, 32,  an East Baltimore resident witnessing police cordoning off an entire block of Aiken Street after a shoot-out on Tuesday told the SUN:  “It makes you want to go somewhere else. The city is dead.” Another aspect of the truth.

Friday the Mayor cut the ribbon of a project far from Baltimore's waterfront in a neighborhood we have now come to call Station North. She mentions the New York Times list of 52 olaces to see in 2018. The list includes Baltimore. The project is developed by the African American developer Ernst Valery who does housing in Baltimore, Buffalo and Oakland. His mantra is "development without displacement". The actor Wendell Pierce who played a detective in The Wire and invested in the project says that “The social justice movement of the 21st century is economic development”. He mentions the development apprentice program that Valery had launched with six graduates to date, people trained to create wealth, one poised to work in West Baltimore. Counter to public perception there are  many development dollars flowing into neighborhoods, in Greenmount West, in East Baltimore and also in West Baltimore. That, too is part of the truth.

Affordable housing on Greenmount Avenue
(Photo: Philipsen)

Hearing Valery and Pierce speak, an inner voice intones the inevitable Baltimore chorus of sirens denouncing the development as gentrification and the conversion of young people of color into entrepreneurs as a neo-liberal charade. Baltimore has such an unfortunate way of taking down its own progress, achievements and leaders tat those cynical voices become internalized. Baltimore suffers from a perennial inferiority complex, if one can use such a psychological term for a city at all. The preference of dismantling leaders is like self fulfilling prophecy. It has been going since, at least, Mayor Kurt Schmokethat there is nothing good being said about any of them, whether it is Schmoke, O'Malley, Dixon, Rawlings Blake or Pugh; as if these leaders were not of this city and not elected here but dropped in by some secret power.

Issues are routinely seen through binary lenses and constructed in false alternatives such as: development downtown or in neighborhoods (instead of both),  politicians working with developers or communities (instead of both), projects that help either the rich or the poor or those who are new in Baltimore versus those who are already here. All, for the most part, false choices.

Even the destructive, anti intellectual and populist rhetoric of the current US President is imported to divide residents by heaping derision on "the creatives",  "the millenials" or "elitists" who take away from the working poor, or people of color. No doubt, such divisions exist, but there is no point in making them deeper.
Lazy armchair comments, easily launched via Twitter and Facebook, don't distinguish between council members, department heads, the Mayor and her staff, delegates or members of congress. To the cynics they are all the same. In the "throw the rascals out" view, anybody elected to anything is seen as a parasite.

Clearly, history shows that a people divided in fear and opposition  achieve nothing, but a people united for something can make a real difference.

Market rate housing Station North
(Photo: Philipsen)

Baltimore won't heal from forever amplifying the horror that unfolds in its "no-go" zones. Baltimore won't heal either from white-washing the presence, or the history, neither in the literal nor in the broader sense. "Baltimore's brand" is tarnished, but maybe more importantly, its soul is bleeding.

Healing can only come from uniting around common goals and from believing that a better future is possible. There is power in recognizing that this better future is within reach if people unite. It remains elusive where division and fear reign.

The choice of narrative is between hope and possibility and despair and fear. The former build, the latter kill.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Contradictions resolved: Why more density means less traffic

Writing about Baltimore, cities in general and smart cities in particular makes it evident that much of what is smart seems counter-intuitive on first glance. From this insight flowed the idea of a series of articles addressing those seeming contradictions head on.

District of Columbia transportation statistics: VMT is going down
(Source: DOT)

One of the more glaring "contradictions" where reality is counter to public opinion is that denser development actually means less traffic and not more.

How is that possible?

The answer has two parts and is  really very simple:

1. The closer things are together (the definition of density) the less travel is needed to get to places. 
2. The closer things are together the more alternatives to driving a car become plausible

The evidence can be found in many research papers and studies in which metrics like "vehicle miles traveled" (VMT) are used to track how far the average person drives in a car per year. In the US as a country, VMT is about twice of what it is in a typical European country. To be clear, that isn't because the US is bigger ( Los Angeles is 2,600 miles from Baltimore whereas Munich is only 491 miles from Hamburg), most annual VMT comes from  commuting and local trips for errands, and leisure. Long distances over 300 miles or so are usually not driven in a car in any country. 

District of Columbia: 100,000 new residents in 15 years

Of course, traffic is going to be much less congested if many people use transit, a bicycle or walk. Density encourages all of those "alternative" modes of transportation. Dense cities have the highest transit usage because where density is high transit is worth the investment because the cost benefit is much better than in low density areas where buses or trains have to go much further to fill up with enough riders to run. 

These simple facts come as a shock to most Americans who are deeply density averse even though they love to travel to Venice, Paris or Copenhagen, all eminently denser than most American Cities. 

Mode split in DC: 38.5% transit , 13.6 walk, 4.5% bike

All this is pretty logical, isn't it? Still, almost every neighborhood association fights development and density coming near them using traffic as the favorite argument why. 

People may say that the national average is not meaningful when they are concerned about the nearest intersection. While there is some validity to the argument that one dense project won't reduce congestion from decades of sprawl, it may be comforting that even on a local scale density reduces congestion. Washington DC is certainly still congested, but its growth of about 100,000 people between 2000 and 2015 has actually reduced local VMT. To judge the impact of development one always has to look at the alternative. 200 households of a mid-size apartment building spread over 200 large lot single family homes will cause vastly more traffic, not only where these houses are but also where those residents live, shop and play. 

Ok, people may say, that's all fine and well, but we in America don't like to live in dense cities. 

An explanation why the seeming contradiction that a denser city is also a more pleasant and attractive city would be another article, so would be one that proves that if everybody wants to live in a green rural setting, nobody will get it.

As long as people fight density, we won't have smart cities or protected landscapes.

Additional articles in this series Contradictions resolved will address additional popular misconceptions such as:

why bus and bike-lanes relieve congestion even while reducing road capacity, 

why open space protection inside growth areas still promotes smart growth, 

why affirmative action is appropriate to create a level playing field, 

why black lives matter is the right slogan even when all lives matter, 

why private public partnerships cost more than plain public investment
why reducing Baltimore’s taxes could result in a growing tax base, 

and why legalizing drugs could reduce drug addiction to name just a few.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA  

International comparison : US VMT: 13,000 km, France 6,200 km

The failed concept of Harborplace

Baltimore Business Journal editor in chief Joanna Sullivan rang the alarm bells in an editorial headlined "Ashkenazy, hurry up! Baltimore never needed a renovated Harborplace more than it does today", citing the construction fences that ringed the pavilions during the Christmas season, Opening Day and will likely still be there for Light City. A project which the missed several deadlines for the promised sprucing up of the tired Festival Marketplace that the pavilions once represented.

The Festival Market Place in Baltimore at Harborplace: Failing for some time

This raises the question whether the problem isn't bigger than Askenazy's attempted renovation and whether a critical look at what has long been considered Baltimore's crown jewel isn't in order.  For an answer we have to take a look at the original Festival Marketplace concept and what happened to it in other cities.

The concept has seen its better days long ago, it failed in many cities from the onset and wasn't overly convincing in its Baltimore's waterfront implementation either, except maybe the for very first years. The original idea was good, though, and the words in which Boston architect Benjamin Thompson described his design still ring right today, reminiscent, really,of the food-halls currently popping up all over the country.

“The natural pageantry of crowds and goods, of meat, fish and crops from the fields, of things made and things grown, all to be tasted, smelled, seen and touched, are the prime source of sensations, experience and amusement in the daily lives of whole populations” (Benjamin Thomson in 1971 in the Boston Sunday Globe about Faneuil Hall)

Westpark at the Inner Harbor: Baltimore's "living room" (Photo: Philipsen)

The problem, though, was built in from the beginning in the shape of chain stores lined up along interior corridors like in a mall. This creates an almost insolvable orientation conflict and an emphasis on inward looking stores that made the backs of the pavilions facing Pratt and Light Street unattractive while the fronts were made attractive not by the stores but by terraces. 28 years after the Faneuil Hall model Architecture critic Alexandra Lange wrote this about the concept in a 2009 essay in the Design Observer:

Once upon a time in the 1970s, the festival marketplace was a treat. Its co-inventor, architect Benjamin Thompson, wrote: “The natural pageantry of crowds and goods, of meat, fish and crops from the fields, of things made and things grown, all to be tasted, smelled, seen and touched, are the prime source of sensations, experience and amusement in the daily lives of whole populations — were and still are, in most nations except our own.” Faneuil Hall, which opened in Boston in 1976, was his riposte to dying urban downtowns and everywhere-the-same malls. It was supposed to be more than commerce. It was an everyday fair.  Developer James Rouse and Benjamin Thompson & Associates attempted to replicate Faneuil Hall’s success on similarly obsolete waterfronts in New York (South Street Seaport) and Baltimore (Harborplace). Baltimore worked, New York didn’t. 

Shop Architects, South Street Seaport reconstruction concept 2014 (SHOP)

Like Baltimore's Harborplace pavilions, South Street Seaport went from the Rouse Company to General Growth Properties (GGP), a mall manager who soon ran into financial trouble and offloaded its Festival acquisitions. In New York that meant that an ambitious plan by SHOP architects to reboot the Seaport was on hold, prompting the famed New York based architecture critic Paul Goldberger  to place an op-ed in the New York Times in which heaped scathing criticism on New York's Festival Marketplace:

[with the original concept] Manhattanites would at last have something that linked their modern lives with the seafaring days of their city’s nativity.
That was the promise; in reality, we got a disappointing hodgepodge. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s the city acquiesced to the Rouse Corporation’s “festival marketplace” concept and filled the beautiful old buildings with chain stores. The South Street Seaport Museum moldered. Actual New Yorkers rarely came. Instead, tourists wandered aimlessly through the bland stores. 

Fish Market at the working  port of Portland, ME

But then the Howard Hughes company became the new owner of  New York's Seaport on Pier 17 and picked up SHOP's design concepts for a 21st-century rethink of Pier 17 which is now is nearing its completion. The $785 million Seaport District redevelopment will include seven buildings on several city blocks and mix hospitality, retail, entertainment, and cultural venues. Full completion is expected by 2020. The Architectural Record gives the new design a positive review in its current issue:

"SHoP’s design represents a more expansive and inclusive approach than that of its predecessor to the challenge of integrating into the historic area and urban fabric....Pier 17’s design is a sophisticated take on the industrial buildings that once filled the area. Given Pier 17’s outward-looking design, its upscale tenants, and its emphasis on being a good neighbor, it looks likely to be a draw for even jaded Manhattanites—if they can make their way through the throngs of tourists who are sure to show up. " 

Design concepts for pavilions as presented in 2015 (M2G2)

Alexandra Lange who wrote her critique based on the then unbuilt SHOp proposal was much less intrigued:

the proposal [is]  really just a festival marketplace rebranded and rebooted. There are odd angles and radical materials and allusions to ship’s rigging, but it is still an outdoor mall. [...] connections of SHoP’s architecture to known New York, the porthole lattice on the tower; the “floating structures” of the boutique hotel, whose wooden sides evoke a boat; the steel cables from which these buildings are to be hung, an echo of the Brooklyn Bridge suspenders [are] deeply hokey in a postmodern way, in which everything new must be justified by the old, despite the fact that the buildings couldn’t be more up-to-date. The new plan pretends to be a new neighborhood while really trying to create a fancier, more contemporary tourist trap. 

In Baltimore General Growth didn't even develop any kind of inspired new ideas before the current owner Ashkenazy bought the properties from GGP. A radical re-think about Harborplace and its role in Baltimore took never place, even though, just as in New York, the area is now surrounded by many residents not only in the flourishing neighborhoods of Federal Hill, Sharp Leadenhall and Otterbein but the burgeoning new "neighborhood" of downtown with its thousands of new apartments. As such,  Harborplace shouldn't be only a destination for tourists which are increasingly bored by the cookie-cutter Marketplace which has nearly identical incarnations even in smaller towns such as Norfolk, VA.

When Ashkenazy finally submitted their modest proposals, Baltimore's Design Review Panel UDARP was split in its opinions about the redesign of the Pavilions as presented by the Seattle based retail design firm MG2 in 2015.  David Rubin was "very positive about this" but the other panelists, Richard Burns, Gary Bowden and David Haresign were much less impressed. Even the generally rather accommodating Planning Director Tom Stosur bemoaned elements that are "to heavy", "keep the lightness", he admonished. The architects responded  that they needed "to strike a balance" between respecting the pavilion design and modern retailers expectations. In other words, the chain stores and the interior line-up reminiscent of a mall remained as the drivers, the concept hasn't become any more convincing. Quite the opposite, malls are failing all across the country.

Cramped: Bookfestival at the Harbor (photo: Philipsen)

What could a radically re-invented Inner Harbor look like? A good "living room" for all the new surrounding residents and for visitors alike. It would include places to eat, certainly; it should include ample space to see tall ships, board water taxis and the water cruises all, a genuine water-oriented activities that feels cramped and crowded today. It should include also plenty of room for the festivals and events such as the Christmas market, Light City or the Book Fair for crowds to gather, for bands to play and for people to watch each other. All those events feel cramped as well in today's configuration, especially since the City seems unable to deliver on the promise of a connected McKeldin Plaza. In a time where bakers and butchers have a come-back, those should be there as well as a real fish market, ideally with the working boats docking right next to the stalls as in Portland Maine. Maybe a beer garden. Essentially what is needed the most, after the buildings surrounding the harbor have become ever bigger and taller, is a space to decompress. Less commercial and more civic. A waterfront park, really.

More civic, less commercial (photo: Philipsen)

None of those critical Baltimore design reviewers are still on the refurbished UDARP panel.  Three years later the pavilions are still on the same path they were in 2015. A modest refurbishment that will look even more corporate.

What will be revealed will be a far cry from Thompson's "natural pageantry of crowds and goods, of meat, fish and crops from the fields, of things made and things grown, all to be tasted, smelled, seen and touched."

For better or worse, it will also be a far cry from the reboot SHOP Architects are trying to do on Pier 17 in New York.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA






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