Baltimore looks like a ghetto, need improvement (home, neighborhood)

[TheseGoTo11]

Minneapolis is a great city with tons of character, more pedestrian traffic than any other midwestern downtown besides Chicago, and the new baseball stadium will only add to that. Moreover, you can walk Hennepin Ave the 2 miles or so from Uptown to NE Minneapolis and it's interesting neighborhoods all the way. Problem is the weather.

Don't think there's any question that Detroit is worse than Baltimore, but it'll be 100 years before you can walk around Baltimore with limited concern for safety the way you can along Hennepin Ave in Minneapolis.

[jonjj]

Originally Posted by TheseGoTo11

Minneapolis is a great city with tons of character, more pedestrian traffic than any other midwestern downtown besides Chicago, and the new baseball stadium will only add to that. Moreover, you can walk Hennepin Ave the 2 miles or so from Uptown to NE Minneapolis and it's interesting neighborhoods all the way. Problem is the weather.

Don't think there's any question that Detroit is worse than Baltimore, but it'll be 100 years before you can walk around Baltimore with limited concern for safety the way you can along Hennepin Ave in Minneapolis.

Those 100 years came rather quickly because I walk Baltimore all the time with little insecurity. I looked up their "walkability" scores and both cities scored high-Minneapolis at 95 and Baltimore at 98.
Baltimore--- Walk Score - Helping homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods.
Minneapolis--- http://www.walkscore.com/get-score.p...neapolis&go=Go

[Chris-Kim]

Balto is doomed. To improve it, we would need more $$$ from tax payers. People with relatively high income levels don't and wouldn't live in Balto. No tax = no improvement. Plus, I don't see how Balto would attract big corporations to generate tax revenues.

[barante]

Not so fast. The city isn't even dying. Despite awesome poverty and assorted social problems, it is doing surprisingly well. In fact there has been a recent influx of wealthy people who have bought and occupied all those condos and market-rate rentals ringing the harbor.
Baltimore's problems are due not only to the poverty of its residents, a poverty and minds and means, but also due to the fact that it is an ancient city (by U.S. standards). That means huge infrastructural problems. Every water main break is a financial disaster. The suburbs are not far behind, though, and when that crisis begins, we will really be talking about some expenses.
This current national depression poses an interesting challenge to the suburbs. For decades, abandonment has been a city problem aggravated by the presence of lead paint in basically all houses built before 1978. Lead was used everywhere, of course, but the fact that so many marginal properties in the city are rentals led to a wave of damage suits against landlords who lost any insurance they may have had against liabilities. This has led to a veritable holy war against landlords by crusading lawyers, who have won huge settlements on damage to people who were not on leases and therefore were essentially, in many cases, occupying the premises against the terms of the rental contract.
Since the standard procedure in property transactions is for the owner of such properties to simply declare the possible presence of lead paint, without acknowledging their presence or any responsibility, I have never quite understood why renters have not been asked to sign such a declaration.
Anyway, now abandonment is being repeated in the suburbs. Not because of lead paint but because of foreclosures. This will create lots of unpredictability (including racial) in neighborhoods where people basically paid good money to be with people of their own kind. Unsettling times in store for suburbs.

[jonjj]

Originally Posted by Chris-Kim

Balto is doomed. To improve it, we would need more $$$ from tax payers. People with relatively high income levels don't and wouldn't live in Balto. No tax = no improvement. Plus, I don't see how Balto would attract big corporations to generate tax revenues.

You haven't a clue. Take a ride through Roland Park, Mt. Washington, Guilford, Homeland, Bolton Hill and other neighborhoods. Plenty of wealthy people live in Baltimore. (Not to mention the shorefront areas.)

[driverA]

Originally Posted by jonjj

You haven't a clue. Take a ride through Roland Park, Mt. Washington, Guilford, Homeland, Bolton Hill and other neighborhoods. Plenty of wealthy people live in Baltimore. (Not to mention the shorefront areas.)

The not so great school districts and the crime limit the number of wealthy families that want to live here.

Also, wealthy city people generally want cultural offerings and fancy stuff like museums and operas. As discussed in another thread, Baltimore doesn't offer a lot of that compared to other cities (not my words).

[barante]

Nonsense. The wealthy families moving to the Inner Harbor are mostly empty-nesters who have no need for schools. Those who have school-aged kids send them to private schools.
In Roland Park (and Guilford, Homeland, Mount Washington, etc.) kids go to private schools. In fact many returned from the county because it is easier to live in North Baltimore near those schools.
Drive on. Because you show no grasp of Baltimore's cultural offerings. My words.

[mrboltonman]

Baltimore has a ton of cultural offerings.
Walters Art Museum
Maryland Science Center
Visionary Art Museum
Cylburn Arboretum
Baltimore Museum of Art
B&O Museum
Mount Clare Museum House
Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum
Mount Vernon Monument
Historic Neighborhoods
Lyric Opera House
Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

Baltimore has a ton to do but people just don't realize. It's not DC with a big mall and museums all around it but there is stuff throughout the city.

I see a few projects/ideas that will really benefit the city.

State Center Revamp
Red Line
Sports Complex and Gaming (Lacrosse Stadium and Casino)
10 Inner Harbor

[Woodlands]

Mt Washington Elementary, Roland Park Middle, and Poly-Western High School are in the same zone and are ranked as some of the best schools in the city and the state. Granted there are many in the City that are not, but those seeking public education may find these schools and the neighborhoods that they serve affordable, safe, and attractive.

[emsgoof]

Originally Posted by jonjj

Fortunately, we also have Hopkins in the city, equivalent to a Fortune 500 company, with 5 campuses, and which is building a massive building in East Baltimore, although it's not a skyline buster. Thank heaven for Hopkins, which is unlikely to pick up and move for a cooler city.

Johns Hopkins directed that the hospital be placed in its present location in the 1860's. There are several reasons, historians believe, for the location. One, many of the original trustees were Quakers. They felt the hospital should be built to provide care for the poor, so built it in an area accessible to them. Two, there had recently been a major flood in Baltimore (the Jones Falls had a massive flood that damaged most of the downtown area), but the area chosen was higher than the surrounding land, and hadn't flooded. Three, the state had come to Mr. Hopkins about buying the land that an asylum was already on, since the patients of the asylum were being moved to a different facility.
The hospital will not move from this location, since the trust requires the hospital to stay in the city.
The new building will be a large critical care complex, with each floor designated to a different critical care specialty, in addition to the first two floors being new emergency departments (one for adults, one for pediatrics). Of interesting note, while the east side of Baltimore City only has two hospitals (the main Hopkins hospital, and Hopkins Bayview both of which have a need to add patient capacity, the state refused to allow Hopkins to add to their patient capacity.
Of note, it's thought that the medical phrase "grand rounds" comes from the "Dome" building (Billings), which had rooms off of the round central area. Medical students literally went around the circle to each room to discuss each patient's case (a major change from historical medical "trade schools", which simply relied on lecture to teach students).
Another planned expansion of the Hopkins medical complex was north up Broadway towards North Ave, creating a massive biotech research park. This would have included research facilities, housing, and commercial areas- basically becoming a "self sufficient" area of the city. I know the plans had stalled for this complex, due to lack of interest from the city and / or state (I don't recall who was dragging their feet on the issue) as of a few years ago. If I also remember correctly, the Johns Hopkins Institute (medical and the university) is one of the largest, if not the largest, employer in the city.

Regarding "things to do", don't forget the Baltimore Streetcar Museum at 1901 Falls Road! Unlike most rail museums that have collections from all over the world, the BSM collection is almost all from Baltimore, due to the different track gauge (distance between the rails) for the streetcar tracks as compared to most other cities.

Regarding the "ghetto" comment... just wait. She-lies Dixon is trying her hardest to run the city to the ground before she's sent away to prison.