Five ways candidates should embrace city's future

The same old answers aren't going to work for candidates in the city's upcoming election. So here is a guide to show them how to get beyond the current rhetoric about urban symptoms like crime and corruption to make a real physical difference in the future of Baltimore. Voters can then compare this to what the candidates are promising and decide who to support. Here are five ways Baltimore can turn the corner and embrace the future:

A possible new Circulator Bus non-profit authority district

1 - Replace and expand Charm City Circulator Bus System

The Charm City Circulator bus system is the perfect example of how this city is spending too much of our tax dollars in favor downtown and the privileged neighborhoods, to the detriment of the rest of the city. Moreover, the city does not run the system very well. A state official described the city's system as being in a "death spiral" of reduced service and aging buses. Moreover, it has become part of a crazy quilt of redundancy that competes with existing MTA bus service and a slew of private shuttles run by institutions such as colleges and businesses such as Amazon.

The solution is to create a new organization that will consolidate all of these public and private circulators and shuttles into a new integrated localized system which serves everyone. It would be funded by those who really have "skin in the game" - the same institutions who are now spending money to benefit only a small segment of the transit market. This would then enable the state-run MTA system to focus on areas not served by the shuttles and to strengthen its system of transit transfer hubs, instead of dealing with unfair and destructive competition with free buses.

Read more in this 2015 blog post:  https://baltimoreinnerspace.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-to-sort-out-bus-system-circulator.html

Possible new diverse income housing on the Cherry Hill waterfront

2 - Create mixed-income developments in lower income areas that really work

There's a lot of talk about "Two Baltimores", rich and poor, but investment in mixed-income developments really hasn't worked well in virtually any part of the city.

For many decades, there's been a lot of money thrown at providing low income housing, from the high-rise projects of the 1950s through the huge Sandtown project by the Enterprise Foundation in the 1990s, but the overall result has been that the city has been losing rather than gaining low income housing. Two of the problems in this, bad design and lack of diversity, have since been rectified in more recent mixed-income projects such as Heritage Crossing, Albemarle Square and Center West, but this has not been nearly enough to make them catalysts to stem blight in their surrounding areas.

Albemarle Square, which replaced the Flag House Courts high rises just north of Little Italy and east of downtown, has almost all the ingredients of success - a near ideal location, good design and a mix of low and middle income units, but the adjacent Corned Beef Row and Jonestown areas are now even more vacant and blighted than ever. Major institutions such as the Jewish Museum, National Aquarium and Ronald McDonald House have only helped a little. And this is an area located squarely in the so-called "White L" of affluence and privilege.

The basic problem is that property values in surrounding areas are still too low to justify adequate investment and maintenance. Higher income "residents by choice" still avoid these surrounding areas, creating isolated islands of development. Even moderately higher income people will only live there if it's cheaper than their alternatives. This creates an escalation of subsidies, not only for the low income residents who actually need subsidies, but also for those with higher incomes as well. It has also seriously curtailed the ability to support non-residential uses, particularly strong retail, which is essential to creating viable urban communities and attracting "choice" residents. The result is more disinvestment, not investment.

The solution is to identify and invest in low income areas where major value can actually be added. The north side of Carroll Park adjacent to the Mount Clare neighborhood is a prime example. Carroll Park is magnificent and is next to the world class B&O Railroad Museum and the higher income Union Square neighborhood, but Mount Clare is crumbling from neglect. Another example is next to the even more magnificent Druid Hill Park where Reservoir Hill intersects the Greater Mondawmin neighborhood. The Westport and Cherry Hill waterfronts are other clear examples. None of these are in the so-called "White L".

Gentrification? That's not a significant issue in a city as non-diverse as Baltimore which has lost over a third of its population.

Read more in many articles throughout this blog, such as:
 https://baltimoreinnerspace.blogspot.com/2017/07/green-network-part-1-four-priority_10.html

Possible neighborhood down in the ditch where the "Highway to Nowhere" is now,
leaving room for a revival of the Red Line plan (Marc Szarkowski).

3 - Get rid of the "Highway to Nowhere" once and for all

Why can't the city admit that this useless ill-fated stub of an Interstate Highway is a cancer that must be fully removed from West Baltimore? The charades started in the 1970s before construction even began with visions of "capping it over" to create development lots that would be far more expensive than their dubious value. Then the ill-fated light rail Red Line stuck in its median strip was supposed to add the value, but of course, it never did. Payson Street was extended across the highway through a pair of obnoxious high speed intersections, but that didn't help much, and now there's talking of doing the same with Fremont Avenue.

Now the focus has turned to doing something with the huge abandoned Metro West complex formerly occupied by the Social Security Administration. Even this project has not raised calls to get rid of the highway. The plan still appears to be to keep the highway, but knock down the bridges over MLK Boulevard to simply move all the traffic to the surface intersections. But the problem is not the connections across the highway - it's the highway itself.

Redeveloping Metro West is an important project, but only if it is an opportunity to integrate it with all of West Baltimore, notably Heritage Crossing, Lafayette Square, Harlem Park and Poppleton. The unconflicted connections left by the highway bridges may be the best way to add value to really make the project work. And perhaps moving the much of the State Center office space to Metro West is the way to get it going.

Read more in many articles throughout this blog, such as:
 https://baltimoreinnerspace.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-low-line.html

Historic architecture on Lafayette Square surrounded by squalor that needs to be treasured

4 - Get serious about historic preservation

Baltimore's glorious but often tumultuous history is the main thing that sets it apart from the suburbs and gives us our soul and identity. This is especially so in the African American communities where this history has never been fully told or has even been largely forgotten. The center of this history is Upton, where some residents longingly remember the destroyed Royal Theater, Freedom House and other vestiges of the past, while others are busy plotting to knock down even more of this heritage such as the row of houses where Cab Calloway grew up.

Upton has a proud past and should have everything going for it in the future - a great location, a subway station and distinctive architecture. All it needs is an intelligent historic preservation plan to add to its value. Instead, we get a city that simply wants to knock down the irreplaceable buildings, to add to the portfolio of vacant lots, failed parks and sporadically located modern ticky tacky rowhouses that could be from anywhere, USA.

Without preservation, Upton will no longer be Upton. It will just be part of the continuing depopulation of the city that began half a century ago. Next stop: Lafayette Square.

Possible MagLev Station on the downtown Post Office site across the street from the Shot Tower
 at the end of the Jones Falls Expressway

5 - Tune in to the Magnetic Levitation high speed rail project

A consortium of investors in the US and Japan want to build a 300 mph MagLev system from Washington, DC to New York, with a first phase that would terminate in Baltimore. They've gotten the federal government involved and have submitted major portions of the environmental impact review process. If this project happens, Baltimore would suddenly be a mere 15 minutes from downtown Washington and at the cutting-edge of 21st century transportation.

Baltimore doesn't really need to do much to push this project, but we do need to watch it closely and get involved. The consortium really doesn't seem to care much about Baltimore, except for it being the place where the first phase would end and be evaluated on the way to phase two. They've selected BWI-Marshall Airport as a first station, a choice that would maintain a high profile for the project without much additional risk. This might help reveal the impact of MagLev on air travel, but DC already has Reagan National Airport as the choice of air travelers for whom convenience is the priority.

In contrast, Baltimore is where the impact of MagLev could be profound. Underneath Camden Yards was the project's early station choice. Now Cherry Hill is being favored, because they think they could build the station there less expensively above ground. The downtown option has shifted to the site of the Garmatz Federal Building on Pratt Street. But the alternatives are highly fluid because very little of the project would be above ground, with the major constraints being constructability and the need for a straight alignment that would enable vehicles to maintain maximum speed. Two other options could be in the vicinity of Charles Center and the Shot Tower, but these have not been studied.

The city has not been asked to pay for anything on this project. So in the aftermath of the city's hangover from the failed Red Line light rail project, why has their been so little interest in a far larger project that would dramatically vault Baltimore to the front of the international transportation stage?

Read more in these blog posts:

 https://baltimoreinnerspace.blogspot.com/2019/12/maglev-station-should-cross-street-into.html

 https://baltimoreinnerspace.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-shot-tower-maglev-station-would.html

Baltimore has fared badly from overhyping potential "game changer" projects from the Grand Prix to the Horseshoe Casino to Port Covington and the Red Line, but the city's need for big ideas is as strong as ever. Our future depends on it.