BCPD. Housing. Education. Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. Developers & Big Business. Commentary: Redistricting map is a stain on the political process – MarylandReporter.com. 3rd Congressional District 2012 (Md. Planning Dept. map) By Len Lazarick Len@MarylandReporter.com When Del. Neil Parrott was gathering petition signatures to put congressional redistricting on the ballot so voters could overturn it, he found that all he needed to do was show people the map itself and they were ready to sign on. That’s the same appalled reaction I found last week when I made a presentation on Question 5 to students and staff at the University of Maryland Baltimore. All they had to do was look at the map, particularly the lines for the 3rd Congressional District, to realize there was something very wrong.
That map to the right has been called an ink blot, a blood splatter, a rabbit after a blast from a shot gun and, as one federal judge put it, “a Rorschach-like eyesore.” “In form, the original Massachusetts Gerrymander looks tame by comparison,” wrote Appellate Judge Paul Niemeyer in his opinion. Blatantly bogus arguments On the July 4th weekend last year, Gov. Gov. Baltimore at Night. Baltimore is located along the mid-Atlantic coastline of the United States, at the terminus of the Patapsco River into Chesapeake Bay. It is the largest seaport along this part of the coast, and the subject of this astronaut photograph from the International Space Station. Like many large U.S. metropolitan areas, the most brightly lit areas correspond to the highest density of buildings and typically indicates the urban core—including, in this case, the “Inner Harbor” tourist and commercial area.
Highways and large arterial streets appear as bright yellow-orange lines extending outwards into the surrounding suburbs (light violet and reddish brown regions of diffuse lighting). Dark areas beyond the suburban zone are rural or, to the southeast, indicate the waters of Chesapeake Bay. Small, dark patches are open spaces, including parks, cemeteries, and the Baltimore Zoo (within Druid Hill Park). Instrument(s): ISS - Digital Camera. Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance. “Highway to Nowhere” shut down — and Baltimore doesn’t notice. Empty Route 40 between Franklin and Mulberry streets — aka “The Highway to Nowhere” — as it looked this past Friday, when the rest of Baltimore was returning to normal. Photo by: Gerald Neily The most indelible image from last week’s blizzard was that of clogged bumper-to-bumper traffic on virtually every expressway, creating horror stories of delay and entrapment throughout the region.
But West Baltimore’s Franklin-Mulberry Expressway or FMX (my name for the one-mile, six-lane highway sandwiched between Franklin and Mulberry Streets, just west of Martin Luther King Boulevard) remains just the opposite – a vast, barren expanse of virgin snow without even a single set of tire tracks to mark the territory. The so-called “Highway to Nowhere” has been totally closed westbound since last November, with the eastbound lanes recently closed as well, in order to build a relatively small expansion of the MARC parking lot at the west end at Pulaski Street.
Community leveled for unused expressway. 'Huge drop' in funding for community development in Baltimore, nationwide. The City Arts Apartments are full of artists who live and work in the Baltimore complex, built on what long had been a vacant lot in a very vacant neighborhood. But a sudden gap in its development financing almost kept the project from getting off the ground.
The $2.5 million hole was dug by the financial crisis, which pummeled the value of tax credits that many affordable-housing projects rely on. The post-crisis landscape for community development is shaping up to be even more challenging. Government funding for work to revitalize neighborhoods is plummeting nationwide amid pressure to cut budgets, increasing the odds of gaps that cannot be overcome. It's a prospect that alarms practitioners in Baltimore, where the battle against vacant housing and blight has raged for decades. Baltimore Housing Commissioner Paul T. "It's a huge drop," he said. But shrinking grants could be just the beginning. "Baltimore is literally at a crossroads," Duff said. Patterson Park Place: The Patterson Park Community Development Corp. Helped Some East-Side Neighborhoods Go From Bust To Boom. What’s its Next Move? The Patterson Park Community Development Corp. Helped Some East-Side Neighborhoods Go From Bust To Boom.
What’s its Next Move? Six and a half years ago, Jolyn Rademacher moved to Baltimore from Texas. She says she decided to leave San Antonio, where she was doing Christian mission work, because she really liked Baltimore and the idea of living close to the green expanse of Patterson Park. “I had made a number of trips to Baltimore over a couple of years with the young adults I worked with,” she says. “We had worked in Reservoir Hill at Worker House and at Jonah House. And I just liked it here. She bought a house on Luzerne Avenue, just steps from the park, for $66,000. As Rademacher describes it, it was a trying time for her. It was a fairly uncertain time for her new neighborhood as well. Rademacher bought her house from the then relatively new nonprofit organization Patterson Park Community Development Corp. Six years later, both Rademacher and her neighborhood have come a long way. Baltimore Neighborhoods Research Guide - Enoch Pratt Free Library.
This guide will point you to resources you can use to become better acquainted with neighborhoods in Baltimore City. Defining 'Neighborhood' We usually think the boundaries of our neighborhood enclose the few square blocks surrounding our home, church, school, business, park or playground. However, agencies responsible for collecting, studying, and disseminating data about Baltimore City define neighborhoods quite differently. Geographic and social criteria such as community origins and history, zoning laws, economic patterns, and ethnic concentrations all provide useful information for understanding the dynamics of small areas of the city. Each of these criteria end up defining the word ‘neighborhood’ somewhat differently, and drawing different sets of boundaries.
So, it’s important to be clear about what we mean when we start to research a neighborhood in Baltimore. Ways of Understanding a Neighborhood Using Demographics Use the American Factfinder from the U.S. Zip Codes: The U.S. Ask Us. Census19402010. Rawnumbers copy. Vital Signs 10: Taking the Pulse of Baltimore Neighborhoods. The Rawlings-Blake Review #137: Clean Water Baltimore. Dear Friends: If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me at my website or by email at mayor@baltimorecity.gov. You can also follow the Mayor’s Office and be a part of the conversation on Facebook or Twitter. Sincerely, Stephanie Rawlings-BlakeMayor, City of Baltimore City announces $44 million road improvement plan for Southeast The Baltimore Sun City approves land sale for Coppin science and technology center Sailabration impact on area estimated at $166 million WBAL-TV partners with Baltimore to benefit homelessness programs Gaming Could Be Baltimore Bonanza This week, Baltimore's American Visionary Arts Museum—adjacent to iconic Federal Hill and overlooking the Inner Harbor and Baltimore's beautiful skyline—played host to the Mayor's Cultural Town Hall.
Bagged Leaf Collection Bagged leaf collection is now underway and will continue through January 14, 2013. Ravens Community Quarterback Award Foreclosure Prevention Help Are you facing foreclosure? Russian Festival Pro Bono Day. Corymccray.com - Our Community, Our Issues – Our Community, Our Issues. The Creation of the Ghetto: An Interview with Glenn Ross | Indypendent Reader. Glenn Ross is a community consultant and activist. This interview was recorded at his home in East Baltimore in April 2006. Nicholas Wisniewski: Can you briefly introduce yourself? Glenn Ross: I’ve been living in East Baltimore all my life, and I’m fifty-six-years young.
I’ve been living in this house, in this neighborhood, for about twenty seven years. NW: In many ways, this interview is informed by discussions we have had over the last several months where you have talked at length about the creation of the ghetto. GR: Well, I think it all starts with planning. As you see, I’m a map person, and so what I did was I cross-checked what I saw from the City and from Johns Hopkins and just looked at the similarities.
A related factor to consider is how the drug culture shifts, and here in East Baltimore it happened in a South-East pattern. NW: As we look around East Baltimore we see many abandoned and boarded-up buildings. Baltimore: Anatomy of an American City - Fault Lines. The election of the first black US president offered hope to millions of African Americans across the country. But have four years of an Obama presidency seen positive change for black communities in the US' inner cities? While the 'war on drugs' rages on inside the US, there is some political consensus it is failing. White House officials have even indicated a federal policy shift away from incarceration and towards a public health strategy. In Baltimore, one of the most dangerous cities in the US, the police have reframed their 'war on drugs' as a 'war on guns'.
The rhetoric may have changed, but critics say nothing else has and that concentrated law enforcement has resulted in high levels of incarceration among young African Americans and the criminalisation of entire communities. The nearly 30 years of drug policies have perpetuated cycles of violence and economic repression in US inner cities and especially among poor minority neighbourhoods. Al Jazeera looks at Baltimore in new documentary. Baltimore-area viewers won't see it in their TV listings, but this week a program will premiere on the Al Jazeera English channel that could do more to shape the world's image of their city than any other media coverage or civic promotion done all year.
"Baltimore: Anatomy of an American City" will debut Tuesday night to a potential worldwide audience of 260 million homes. And what those viewers will mainly see is a landscape of young men on bleak street corners, block after block of boarded-up rowhouses, drugs, death, crime scenes and prisons. The port stands idle, factories are silent and warehouses look empty. Images and repeated references to the war on drugs evoke HBO's"The Wire. " Such words and images are part of a larger conversation — often heated — that ranges from City Hall to Hollywood about how Baltimore is depicted to millions of viewers.
She is interviewed in the film. But that reality is not shown in "An Anatomy of an American City. " A tale of two Baltimores.