Baltimore’s problem is sprawl, not a bad economy

Baltimore City has thousands of vacant row houses that have come under increased outside scrutiny after April’s unrest and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s ramped up demolition program.  These lost structures fit a common, but misinformed narrative about Baltimore as a place in economic decline.

Many beautiful row house shells remain in Baltimore. Photo by Jeff La Noue

When evaluating the city’s 20,000 plus vacant row houses, its crime, and its population loss exceeding 300,000 from its peak; pundits often paint a picture of a broken rust belt region that has never recovered from the loss of thousands of manufacturing and steel-making jobs. Washington Post Reporter, E.J. Dionne Jr.  follows this line of thought in his editorial in May of this year. He says

“The violence that has engulfed Baltimore is visible and heartbreaking evidence of a city that has been under siege for decades.

The obvious flashpoints involve race and policing. But since at least the 1970s, the economy’s invisible hand has also been diligently stripping tens of thousands of blue-collar jobs from what was once a bustling workshop where steel, cars and planes were made. Baltimore has tried to do its best in a post-industrial economy, but when work disappears, the results can be catastrophic.”

This assessment is mostly wrong. Vacant houses and neighborhoods in the city are a symptom of robust suburbanization.

Economy

Baltimore has transitioned from its former rust belt economy.  Its 2014 metropolitan GDP is higher than Portland (OR), Columbus (OH), Orlando, Austin, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Nashville, and San Antonio among many others.  The Baltimore Metro area ranks 4^th in percent with a graduate or professional degree and 4^th in median household income among the 25 largest metro areas. (Washington DC is number 1 in both categories)

Here’s the rub.  While Baltimore City’s population has dropped by 300,000 people since its peak census count in 1950, Baltimore County has added 550,000. Anne Arundel County over 400,000. Howard County almost 300,000.  Harford County 200,000. Carrol County has added over 100,000 people.

Most new infrastructure has been in green fields to support outward growth not inward revitalization. Photo by Doug Kerr on Flickr.

(Shown here is Owings Mills, a suburb that has sprouted adjacent to Interstate 795, the Northwest Expressway, and a subway line constructed  in 1983-1985. I-795 extends 9 miles out from the beltway. Baltimore City lost 50,000 people, 13 percent of its population in the 1980’s.)

State spending in the suburbs sapped the city

Baltimore City’s surplus of vacant houses are not there because of a poor regional economy or because the Baltimore area population is shrinking.  It is clearly not.  They exist because the region has built lots of new roads and highways, new schools, new utilities, and new homes outside the city, without equivalent investments inside the core city.  People and businesses have flowed to the geographic shift of new investments in surrounding counties.  As this was happening, physical and social decay escalated in many of Baltimore’s older row house communities, especially African-American neighborhoods. Some of this early exodus was the result of directly racist practices such as redlining. However, shifting public investments outward, often based on theoretically race-neutral growth formulas, certainly was anti-urban and had the greatest impact on urban communities of African-Americans. Regardless, people of all races with choices, have made rational decisions to leave behind thousands of houses in poor school districts with old school buildings, with high crime, pot holed streets, inadequate transit, and leaky pipes.

A renaissance is coming for more city neighborhoods

There are new positive trends that may impact the future of some of Baltimore’s challenged row house neighborhoods. First, Baltimore City has stopped hemorrhaging net population. New city-based industries are thriving in health Sciences and technology. The Under Armour corporation is a major growth magnet with over 3 billion in annual revenues and it is growing every year. Lots of people are still moving out of the city, but there is a new crop of newcomers, often well-educated millennials and some immigrants.  However, they are not spreading across the city evenly.  They are bypassing the most challenging row house neighborhoods.

Baltimore’s booming Canton neighborhood is mixed with new apartments, offices, and fixed-up row houses. Flickr image by Elliott Plack

Thousands of new upscale apartments and professional offices are being added downtown and in a ring of neighborhoods around the harbor, often on former industrial brownfield sites.   The harbor adjacent row house neighborhoods have been fixed up and growing for two decades. It shows, that when there are amenities in the neighborhood, there is demand for row house living.

Vibrant rowhouses in Hampden, a hot neighborhood west of Johns Hopkins University. Flickr image by Lunita Lu

A sign of what may be to come, are the resurging row house neighborhoods west and south of the Johns Hopkins University several miles north of the harbor.  Where there is a neighborhood anchor institution, good retail, and reasonable transit, some old Baltimore row house neighborhoods may reverse their fortunes in the next decade. Inclusivity will be important. However, as in decades before, state and regional decisions on school, infrastructure, and transportation investments will play their part on whether some Baltimore city neighborhoods can come back. These decisions are particularly important for the most vulnerable.

A similar article is in Greater Greater Washington