Why can't Baltimore make an urban turnaround? (Manchester: city hall, crimes)

[personone]

Originally Posted by pwduvall

We are on a City-Data forum but nobody ever presents any city data with their posts. I think you can make an argument that Pittsburgh is doing better than Baltimore right now, especially if you look at recent trends. I don't see how you can claim that Cleveland and St. Louis are doing better than Baltimore (at least up until last week.)

If you look key census statistics 2013 vs. 2010 (household creation, population change, college attainment, vacancy, and per capita income) you will see Pittsburgh leading in nearly all of them. Baltimore leads in household creation by a lot. Cleveland is in last place virtually everywhere. Baltimore is second in most categories. St. Louis does well (second place) educational attainment but is doing very poorly on vacancy status and trends. Per capita income in Pittsburgh is 7% higher than Baltimore's. Per capita income in St. Louis is 19% lower and in Cleveland is 33% lower than Pittsburgh's. Somehow Cleveland manages to position itself as doing much better than Baltimore but that is nothing like the truth.

The riots will clearly knock the wind out of Baltimore sails, but before the riots there was a steady breeze.

You are right, I was going based on more subjective feeling rather than statistics. I lived in Baltimore a few years ago, and didn't have a good impression of the city initially, but it started to grow on me before I left. I got caught up in the riot press, and it brought up my bad memories. I know there has been a lot of development and I also heard the city is attracting younger people.

[personone]

Originally Posted by Northernest Southernest C

Again it all depends on what is an urban turnaround because there are no shortage of them in Baltimore.

You're right that Baltimore has made big strides. I was there in grad school in the mid 2000s, and even comparing now, there has been lots of developments with harbor east and many more. I got caught up in the riot press, and it brought back some initial bad memories I had of the city. I first remember going to harbor in the 90s, so had no memories of it before it became a tourist area. In the grand scheme, can't deny that Baltimore has made strides over time.

[DistrictSonic]

The lack of sufficient institutional advantages in comparison to NYC or DC makes a quick turn around far harder. When you are the center of finance or government it is more likely to turn around quickly.

With that being said, do not buy into the hype of Cleveland, the city is not much better than Detroit. Pittsburgh is doing much better than Baltimore, but it is easier to turn around a smaller city.

The point being is this is going to be a slow process, and Baltimore like many rust belt cities will struggle with this. Improvements are slow, and the process even in the best circumstances can take a generation or two. Plus people do not realize that the lowest DC reached was the same year of the Mt. Pleasant riots, which were not entirely different than the ones you went through recently. (Police paralyzed a latino man.)

[drro]

It's Baltimore, gentlemen, the gods will not save you.

[Northernest Southernest C]

Originally Posted by drro

It's Baltimore, gentlemen, the gods will not save you.

If the best you can contribute to this thread comes from a quote of a fictional character in a tv show then don't even bother replying at all.

[Woodlands]

Originally Posted by pwduvall

We are on a City-Data forum but nobody ever presents any city data with their posts. I think you can make an argument that Pittsburgh is doing better than Baltimore right now, especially if you look at recent trends. I don't see how you can claim that Cleveland and St. Louis are doing better than Baltimore (at least up until last week.)

If you look key census statistics 2013 vs. 2010 (household creation, population change, college attainment, vacancy, and per capita income) you will see Pittsburgh leading in nearly all of them. Baltimore leads in household creation by a lot. Cleveland is in last place virtually everywhere. Baltimore is second in most categories. St. Louis does well (second place) educational attainment but is doing very poorly on vacancy status and trends. Per capita income in Pittsburgh is 7% higher than Baltimore's. Per capita income in St. Louis is 19% lower and in Cleveland is 33% lower than Pittsburgh's. Somehow Cleveland manages to position itself as doing much better than Baltimore but that is nothing like the truth.

The riots will clearly knock the wind out of Baltimore sails, but before the riots there was a steady breeze.

Very true.. Baltimore has made some gains downtown and it areas that have formerly been working class ethnic white neighborhoods. Some African American neighborhoods such as Ashburton, Forest Park, Fairmount, Hunting Park, have also seen improvements and have maintained themselves as middle income African American neighborhoods. The core areas of West Baltimore with some exceptions such as Union Square and Washington Village/Hollins Market continue to struggle. Whats amazing is Ground Zero for the riots is just a stone throw.. mere blocks from Bolton Hill and Reservior Hill the later which is poised to be one of the City's up and coming neighborhoods.

I think the fault lines and the "redevelopment" of some of the areas where the riots occurred will continue to harden. The boundary between Bolton Hill and Madison Park may have harden along with the boundary between Patterson Park and McElderberry Park.. Both of these areas should have been natural 'revitalization areas' for spill over from these already revitalized areas..... but that may be on hold now as riots often have linger effects on the local real estate market.

[640TAG]

Hi to Baltimoreans from a London newbie!

The only US cities I've been in over the years are Las Vegas (hated every minute), LA, Boston, SF (numerous times), NYC (many times) and small towns when driving around. They fascinate me, as they are so completely and utterly different from their European counterparts that I know so well (I'd say Boston is the nearest).

I usually try to see the grit as well as the glitz in everywhere I visit, and having visited the South Bronx in the early 90s all I can say is that if THAT place can turn itself around, it ought to be a piece of cake for Baltimore! I appreciate having Manhattan a subway ride away with it's jobs and housing pressure makes a difference. I am, of course, being flippant.

I've been interested in Baltimore for many years - David Simon's work only intensified it. I can't get over the many streets of rowhouses (what we called "terraced") - they have a European, and above all, English look about them. I'm sure there is nothing cosy about many of those neighbourhoods, but they look it in a way Detroit's wilderness or South Central's sprawl do not. Above all, it must be down to jobs. If there could be more opportunities, then the architecture is all there ripe for restoration (and, I guess, the "g" word). Baltimore could be such a pretty city. It seems to have a compactness missing in many US cities which ought to make transport easier. Many parts of the UK have suffered the same de-industrialisation, especially in the North. Manchester could be our Baltimore (or even Detroit) but has managed to reinvent itself to a fair degree. There's pockets of poverty all over the country - even a few streets of abandoned houses up North, but nothing, NOTHING remotely on the scale of East and West Baltimore in terms of scale or degree of poverty. I guess, despite our financial malaise, we do still have a much tighter welfare safety net and a totally different way of local public finance. A city simply could not go into bankruptcy here - central funding would ensure it didn't.

I wouldn't pretend to know the complexities of the situation in the US. To me, however, it seems to do abandonment and gentrification like no place on earth. That dawned on me a couple of years ago as I sat outside a bar drinking craft beer and eating fries with shaved truffles in Harlem . Like many Londoners, I have a longstanding love affair with NYC and I feel another trip coming on. This time I will make time for Baltimore too.

[drro]

The difference between South Bronx and Manchester and Baltimore is that the gods never stopped caring about South Bronx and Manchester.

[UKWildcat1981]

Detroit is making a comeback why not Baltimore, don't let Detroit beat you in their comeback efforts that would be sad.

[640TAG]

Originally Posted by drro

The difference between South Bronx and Manchester and Baltimore is that the gods never stopped caring about South Bronx and Manchester.

I wouldn't say there was a great deal of god around Grand Concourse when I saw it!