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I don't know where "Charm City" comes from. Baltimore has none of the charm that places like New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah have. What is so special about that Power Plant building and the DOminos Sugar sign? Those are ugly factories/industrial structures that should be demolished. I have posted a lot about resisting urban sprawl and the franchising of America but that only applies to charming Southern cities and small rural towns.
A decaying, urban wasteland like Baltimore....they should just knock down all those rowhouses and replace them with skyscrapers or strip malls. If Baltimore can't have the charm of New Orleans, at least have that modern, vibrant, flashy feel that Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa and Dallas have.
But like the original poster says, maybe Baltimore isn't just for me. After all, I either prefer a suburban subdivision type place or a small town. Don't want to deal with the crime, poverty, drugs, noise, lack of privacy, unfriendliness, traffic, lack of open space, and pollution or the big city. Its a shame that most of Maryland's population lives in the DC and Baltimore areas when there are still wonderful places left over like Hagerstown, Cumberland, Garrett County (around Deep Creek Lake), the Eastern Shore, and Frederick.
Are you kidding me? Baltimore has more charm and character to it than probably 95% of all cities and towns in the country. It's a port city, with an industrial past, so those "old factories which should be demolished" are part of the city's history.
Rowhouses with marble steps, Patterson Park, the "Colts Quiz" from Diner, shouting out "O" during the National Anthem, Fort McHenry...all of these things (and much more) are uniquely and intrinsicly Baltimore. If you don't want to live here, fine, but don't lie and say there's no charm and culture to this city.
But if you want to move to that craphole of a city that is Las Vegas, be my guest. Just don't be surprised when you find out that the place you've moved to is lacking in character and identity.
Terrapin2212
you are really trashing baltimore, but i must ask: who is making you stay here? if you hate it as much as you say, why are you still here? this city doesn't need people who think like this, we need people who want change.
and it's strange to me that you keep talking about baltimore's crime and poverty but you are singing New Orleans praises. I love both cities, but New Orleans is as dangerous and poor.
ITs family connections and financial reasons. I get in-state tuition if I stay in Maryland for either dental or pharmacy school. If I go to schools in Virginia, Texas, or Nevada or West Virginia (as much as I'm a Red Stater WV is TOO isolated for my liking) I'll be paying a lot more. But it just depresses me that the longer I stay here the more I'll be stuck in Maryland. I don't know where in Maryland you're from but growing up in Montgomery County (in Potomac no less) does put a damper on things especially if you are not rich and snobby like most people there. The East Coast is only for a certain kind of person and if you're not it then there's no way you can fit in.
Now most of my friends are here and same with family. All of my friends or family who have ever lived anywhere else in the country like it better where they used to live, with the notable exception of people from New Jersey and New York and Pennsylvania. I'm just afraid if I graduate professional school here it will be even harder to live. I've been to Las Vegas, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, and Boise and seen how cheap it is to live there, how wonderful all the houses are while here for the same prices I can only get a house half the size. The thing is that I don't know the hype about urban sophistication. I mean who goes to the opera every week anyway?
A house in the ghetto in a Maryland city is the same price as a house in Arizona with a swimming pool on a 2 acre lot. The notion of spending 4 years in Baltimore after spending 10 years in Montgomery County and 4 years in PG County just kinda drives me crazy, and my family really wants me to stay here. My mom is very much the East Coast type who can't fit in anywhere else and I'm the opposite, I just need to get out and experience life anywhere outside the East Coast, out in the real America. I also don't fit in politically because Maryland is so radically liberal and people will not accept you if you are not a liberal who wants to vote for Hillary Clinton. I had some hope when Ehrlich was elected governor but with O'malley all hope is lost. He wants to let illegal Mexicans overrun this state.
I don't know how people here lost our way. The East Coast is so out of touch with reality and how most of America is like. This past weekend I was at Deep Creek and spent an afternoon in this wonderful little town called Oakland in Garrett County. LIke out in the rest of the nation almost everyone lives in nice little places like that, here we're all into "urban life" in the big cities.
Wanting to leave isn't as easy as just leaving. Driving through Baltimore on I-95 just gives you that really dreary feel with all the crumbling buildings and ghetto housing projects and the industrial decay. The weather doesn't help either. Maryland could definitely use twice as many sunny days as we get, and half the snow we get!
New Orleans has a lot of poverty but also a lot of charm, like the archtecture of the French Quarter, the jazz culture (as opposed to hip hop and gangsta culture and the rough Irish and Italian neighborhoods) as well as historical southern style buildings. Also New Orleans and Louisiana has a slower, friendlier pace of life. I would go back in a heartbeat (moved here at age 7) but the government just won't do enough to fix the levees enough.
Thanks Barante! Best of luck on your research and writing. One of the great joys of coming to a new place is the strangeness of everything I'm experiencing, even though for the people who live there, it's perfectly natural. I'm endlessly fascinated by how things came to be the way they are. I get great joy out of understanding the personality of a place through its history, and its complex of customs and social relations, and not just through the faded prism of my own prejudices. I trust you'll shed some light on this place, and on the things both to love and recoil from.
Quote:
Originally Posted by barante
Mine is something quite unique -- a chronicle of what many other U.S.. cities experienced between 1910 and the 1970s: Residential segregation laws, racially restrictive covenants, redlining, blockbusting.
Baltimore was a pioneer in all of those developments. In fact, the nation's first residential segregation laws were enacted here between 1910 and 1913. Also, while many other U.S. cities had a dual housing market -- one for whites, a separate one for blacks -- Baltimore took one step further by establishing a separate housing market also for Jews. All this contributed to the formation of the city that you see today.
The book is tentatively titled "A White Man's City: How Bigotry Against Blacks and Jews Shaped Baltimore." I have another year of writing ahead of me. Soon to be a motion picture, lol.
westsideboy, we'll see... You're right. I should have qualified my use of "urban". I don't regard many neighborhoods such as Mount Washington, Roland Park or much of Northeast Baltimore to be urban, since they aren't the most densely populated. Neighborhoods along the harbor have been gaining residents. As for all of Baltimore, maybe we can make a friendly wager and return to this forum after the 2010 census. And, to your point that there is no average city, I don't argue with that. However, I was referring to a numeric average decline in city populations, and I also said "most" not "all" American cities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by westsideboy
guest2 - Obviously not all US cities are losing population. NYC is stable if not growing and places like Phoenix or other sun belt cities are growing rapidly. Even in Maryland places like Frederick, Westminster, Rockville, etc are growing quiet rapidly. There is no such thing as an "average" US city.
I also don't know what you mean by "urban neighborhoods" My understanding, as well as the official census designation ,would call the whole city "urban."
I do agree with your title of "old news" Baltimore has been hemorraging population for about 50 years now, so the recent declines are part of the same pattern. I am glad you like Baltimore so much, but unless you by yourself count for 20,000 new residents, the current demographic decline will continue with the new census in 2010.
Poor Terrapin2212. Man, you really sound depressed. I hope you get out of Baltimore, soon. If you get accepted at UM, definitely think twice!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Terrapin2212
ITs family connections and financial reasons. I get in-state tuition if I stay in Maryland for either dental or pharmacy school. If I go to schools in Virginia, Texas, or Nevada or West Virginia (as much as I'm a Red Stater WV is TOO isolated for my liking) I'll be paying a lot more. But it just depresses me that the longer I stay here the more I'll be stuck in Maryland. I don't know where in Maryland you're from but growing up in Montgomery County (in Potomac no less) does put a damper on things especially if you are not rich and snobby like most people there. The East Coast is only for a certain kind of person and if you're not it then there's no way you can fit in.
Now most of my friends are here and same with family. All of my friends or family who have ever lived anywhere else in the country like it better where they used to live, with the notable exception of people from New Jersey and New York and Pennsylvania. I'm just afraid if I graduate professional school here it will be even harder to live. I've been to Las Vegas, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, and Boise and seen how cheap it is to live there, how wonderful all the houses are while here for the same prices I can only get a house half the size. The thing is that I don't know the hype about urban sophistication. I mean who goes to the opera every week anyway?
A house in the ghetto in a Maryland city is the same price as a house in Arizona with a swimming pool on a 2 acre lot. The notion of spending 4 years in Baltimore after spending 10 years in Montgomery County and 4 years in PG County just kinda drives me crazy, and my family really wants me to stay here. My mom is very much the East Coast type who can't fit in anywhere else and I'm the opposite, I just need to get out and experience life anywhere outside the East Coast, out in the real America. I also don't fit in politically because Maryland is so radically liberal and people will not accept you if you are not a liberal who wants to vote for Hillary Clinton. I had some hope when Ehrlich was elected governor but with O'malley all hope is lost. He wants to let illegal Mexicans overrun this state.
I don't know how people here lost our way. The East Coast is so out of touch with reality and how most of America is like. This past weekend I was at Deep Creek and spent an afternoon in this wonderful little town called Oakland in Garrett County. LIke out in the rest of the nation almost everyone lives in nice little places like that, here we're all into "urban life" in the big cities.
Wanting to leave isn't as easy as just leaving. Driving through Baltimore on I-95 just gives you that really dreary feel with all the crumbling buildings and ghetto housing projects and the industrial decay. The weather doesn't help either. Maryland could definitely use twice as many sunny days as we get, and half the snow we get!
New Orleans has a lot of poverty but also a lot of charm, like the archtecture of the French Quarter, the jazz culture (as opposed to hip hop and gangsta culture and the rough Irish and Italian neighborhoods) as well as historical southern style buildings. Also New Orleans and Louisiana has a slower, friendlier pace of life. I would go back in a heartbeat (moved here at age 7) but the government just won't do enough to fix the levees enough.
You certainly DO post a lot. You must copy and paste the same rant about Baltimore/DC and the Northeast over and over again. It must be exhausting to be so unhappy with your surroundings.
People choose to live in different areas for different reasons. Some like the suburbs and some of us like city living. However, it's rather annoying to read your post trashing the lifestyle of many or a city that many call home.
It sounds to me that you need to find yourself an deserted island, pack it up and move there. Then again, it sounds like you may be just the sort of person who is not happy no matter where they are.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Terrapin2212
I don't know where "Charm City" comes from. Baltimore has none of the charm that places like New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah have. What is so special about that Power Plant building and the DOminos Sugar sign? Those are ugly factories/industrial structures that should be demolished. I have posted a lot about resisting urban sprawl and the franchising of America but that only applies to charming Southern cities and small rural towns.
A decaying, urban wasteland like Baltimore....they should just knock down all those rowhouses and replace them with skyscrapers or strip malls. If Baltimore can't have the charm of New Orleans, at least have that modern, vibrant, flashy feel that Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa and Dallas have.
But like the original poster says, maybe Baltimore isn't just for me. After all, I either prefer a suburban subdivision type place or a small town. Don't want to deal with the crime, poverty, drugs, noise, lack of privacy, unfriendliness, traffic, lack of open space, and pollution or the big city. Its a shame that most of Maryland's population lives in the DC and Baltimore areas when there are still wonderful places left over like Hagerstown, Cumberland, Garrett County (around Deep Creek Lake), the Eastern Shore, and Frederick.
Terrapin~
i'm not saying Baltimore is not without its problems, believe me, i know! but there is a lot of beauty in this city. i have lived in a lot of places around the country, and have encountered the "east coasters" that you are referring too, but people on the west coast are the same way about their coast, and people in the rural south are terribly biased about their state and think there is no where better. i feel very blessed, actually, that i was able to get out and live in Denver, Boulder, Florida, suburbs of bmore and bmore city. there are definitely times, when i watch the news, that baltimore can seem depressing, but there are some really wonderful qualities!
if you would like to live somewhere else this badly, i say go for it, find where you love, to each their own...and if you are here for dental school, then find a niche, find a place you enjoy and you may find that baltimore isn't that bad!
I'm not a big fan of Baltimore either, which is why I'm moving to Los Angeles. But I'm mature enough to recognize that just because this place doesn't work for me, doesn't mean that it can't work for other people. You really do post the same thing over and over again. I hope you get outta here fast and find that utopia that you think exists in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Charlotte, or wherever. But I think you'll find that these cities also have run down buildings in their centers and snobby people in their suburbs. Ever heard of Scottsdale, AZ?
Mine is something quite unique -- a chronicle of what many other U.S.. cities experienced between 1910 and the 1970s: Residential segregation laws, racially restrictive covenants, redlining, blockbusting.
Baltimore was a pioneer in all of those developments. In fact, the nation's first residential segregation laws were enacted here between 1910 and 1913. Also, while many other U.S. cities had a dual housing market -- one for whites, a separate one for blacks -- Baltimore took one step further by establishing a separate housing market also for Jews. All this contributed to the formation of the city that you see today.
The book is tentatively titled "A White Man's City: How Bigotry Against Blacks and Jews Shaped Baltimore." I have another year of writing ahead of me. Soon to be a motion picture, lol.
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wonderful!
