The city I call home, Baltimore, is dying and it's beyond saddening to watch

The orchestra is cancelling it's summer program.

I've said for the past 3 years that the Orioles will leave town within 5 years of when Peter Angelos passes away. It's not about fan support, or the Nationals moving to town, or urban crime keeping fans away. It's a dying city with a shrinking population, fanbase and tax base. Excellent restaurants have closed up. And now the Orchestra is unable to support a full schedule. This means talented musicians will depart for the opportunity to play for a orchestra in a city able to support a full season. Composers will follow, wanting to direct the best. 

The flawed city that I love is wilting on the vine in front of me and it's beyond painful to watch. 

Hey, on the bright side, the decay in the city inspired The Wire and that was a really good show. Also, the documentary 12 O'Clock Boys was interesting to watch. So for those two things I thank Baltimore.

I went to the inner harbor way back sometime in the late 90's to check it out. We parked less than a block from the waterfront and were getting ready to get out of the car when we noticed a dude walking down the street (not the sidewalk, but the street) carrying some sort of knife that would've made Crocodile Dundee and Rambo proud. He didn't have a good look about him. We just drove back to my parents in DE and called it a day decided getting stabbed was not worth a crab cake.

In reply to T.J. :

The Wire came on TV in 2002 and was probably written chronicling Baltimore from 5 years earlier so... The Wire featured the downfalls of Baltimore 20  years ago.

I'm sorry to hear of another loss in Baltimore. 

Burn it down and start over!

As an outsider who just visited there this past month I was blown away by how much nicer it was than I was expecting.  My wife and I ventured into town and had amazing food, walked the waterfront, found lots going on in the evening for nightlife and drinks, and were generally impressed with what we saw.  

Sorry it feels different, I saw a very positive side of the city.  

I agree with TJ.  I did several assessments in the Baltimore area in the 1990-2000s.  I thought it was dead then.  I went to the library downtown to review city directories and Sanborn maps.  Not only could I not find a parking place, but the mob of what looked like homeless people around the library didn’t encourage me to try very hard.  I did go to the B&O railroad museum, which was outstanding, albeit expensive.  

Inner harbor is fantastic and the immediate area seems OK. A few years ago my wife and I went to Lexington market and walked to the inner harbor. The walk back at dusk was not an experience I would want to repeat.

Been to see gimpys band play at the sidebar several times and had fun and didn't feel too unsafe.

I blame the fact that Martin no longer builds aircraft there.

Dude, the city's lost over a third of its population since the 1950s. That's rough. I had no idea. In the same time my city has almost tripled in size. What a contrast. It could happen anywhere, too..

Wikipedia claims it's an up and coming tech sector.

Once a predominantly industrial town, with an economic base focused on steel processing, shipping, auto manufacturing (General Motors Baltimore Assembly), and transportation, the city experienced deindustrialization which cost residents tens of thousands of low-skill, high-wage jobs.[180] The city now relies on a low-wage service economy, which accounts for 31% of jobs in the city.[181][182] Around the turn of the 20th century, Baltimore was the leading US manufacturer of rye whiskeyand straw hats. It also led in refining of crude oil, brought to the city by pipeline from Pennsylvania.[183][184][185]

As of March 2018 the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates Baltimore's unemployment rate at 5.8%[186] while one quarter of Baltimore residents (and 37% of Baltimore children) live in poverty.[187] The 2012 closure of a major steel plant at Sparrows Point is expected to have a further impact on employment and the local economy.[188] The Census Bureau reported in 2013 that 207,000 workers commute into Baltimore city each day.[189] Downtown Baltimore is the primary economic asset within Baltimore City and the region with 29.1 million square feet of office space. The tech sector is rapidly growing as the Baltimore metro ranks 8th in the CBRE Tech Talent Report among 50 U.S. metro areas for high growth rate and number of tech professionals.[190] Forbes ranked Baltimore fourth among America's "new tech hot spots".[191]

The city is home to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Other large companies in Baltimore include Under Armour,[192] BRT Laboratories, Cordish Company,[193] Legg Mason, McCormick & Company, T. Rowe Price, and Royal Farms.[194] A sugar refinery owned by American Sugar Refining is one of Baltimore's cultural icons. Nonprofits based in Baltimore include Lutheran Services in America and Catholic Relief Services.

Almost a quarter of the jobs in the Baltimore region were in science, technology, engineering and math as of mid 2013, in part attributed to the city's extensive undergraduate and graduate schools; maintenance and repair experts were included in this count.[195]

Take a look at Sparrow's Point. It's a huge area - all rubble. Circa 1971, that was one of the largest steel production plants in the entire country. It employed 30,000+ people. Pittsburgh with a Port. Every year from 1971 until the 80's, the plant cut near 3,000 jobs a year. That was all of Baltimore's harbor - good paying jobs that were easily accessible from the city. They all disappeared. 

The other problem, like most eastern cities, was Urban Flight. As the workforce changed, people left the city for the suburbs. Sprawling out until Baltimore and DC became one. As urban housing dropped in price, lower income folks moved into once high-priced neighborhoods, the problem was, they no longer had the good paying jobs of the 1940's. All those (mostly white during the 50-80's, but even black middle class residents started fleeing the city in the last 30 years) folks who headed for the suburbs took their good jobs with them, or, like most Americans, became content with commuting from the burbs to the ports.

I think we're doing ourselves a disservice by becoming too lax on living on the street, by raising taxes on businesses within cities, and by allowing too much sprawl.

Appleseed said:

I blame the fact that Martin no longer builds aircraft there.

They need to bring back the Baltimore Whore.  

In reply to dculberson :

You've noted the real cause. It's the population loss post WWII. Baltimore was an old school mill mil defense contractor town. Once those entities closed up shop their employee base and the businesses that the popular of those employees supported ceased. There's an area of Dundalk, just outside of the city, known as nortpoint village. It was essentially factory tract house for Bethlehem Steel workers. Thousands of brick rowhomes which now sit 15-20% unoccupied and another roughly 20% are rental properties. Pulling down the property values of those around them. The area also harbors a large amount of heroin and methamphetamine abuse, mental illness and domestic abuse. It's ugly. 

There's more issues than answers in town and I'm not sure of the solutions of how to attract jobs without giving away the tax revenue to businesses that the area so desperately needs. 

I just checked out Dundalk. It looks way nicer than my neighborhood, even if property values around me at nearly 5x the price. 

Amazing how some sidewalks and nicely cut grass improves the overall look of a probably really rough area. 

Taking a look at a few areas of Dundalk on Google street view... doesn't look too bad.  Clean yards, no beat up cars, and very few bars on doors and windows.  Maybe it's a specific area of Dundalk?

The google says Orangeville (still looks not that bad, but sandwiched in an industrial area) and Cherry Hill (looks like project style housing) are the worst.

Of course, the people running cities do seem to be widely out of touch some times.  As an example, I heard a city councilman in LA talk about how nice neighborhoods have more parks then bad ones, so adding more parks to bad neighborhoods is a clear solution.... yeah... adding more parks to areas with rampant homeless / drug and crime issue will certainly not go wrong...

Oh, and apparently some LAPD officers have come down with Typhus from the 3rd world like filth in the downtown area..

Heard about this during the evening news tonight: ransomware attack likely to cost Baltimore $18 million.  That can't help.

spitfirebill said:

Appleseed said:

I blame the fact that Martin no longer builds aircraft there.

They need to bring back the Baltimore Whore.  

I prefer the Middle River Stumpjumper.

In reply to aircooled :

As a sizeable piece to the current rye whiskey production in town, I can say with certainty that it employees less than 100 of us. And Royal Farms is a local chain of convienence stores, yes their HQ is in town, but realistically outside of <60 salaried employees, they employee some of the lowest level in retail and food prep positions. Baltimore's job market isn't stellar, nobody is moving to Baltimore for work, the surrounding counties have more opportunity in most fields. 

We spent a weekend there a few years back.  Didn't seem too awful bad back then.  We took in an O's game.  Went to the aquarium.  Took a boat ride around the harbor aboard some diesel-powered monster boat.  We did a good bit of walking, rode mass transit, even went to a childrens' museum, which come to think of it, might have been near a somewhat sketchy area.  Oh, and my credit card info was used fraudulently.  Pretty sure the waitress at some restaurant was responsible for that.

Baltimore could turn it around, but it succeeds or fails with leadership. 

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1971 some real estate agent bought this billboard in Seattle.   Now the place is booming. 

dculberson said:

Dude, the city's lost over a third of its population since the 1950s. That's rough. I had no idea. In the same time my city has almost tripled in size. What a contrast. It could happen anywhere, too..

That sounds bad until you look at Detroit, which was at 1.8M in the 50s and is now well under 700k. But Detroit is coming back, so I wouldn't give up on Baltimore yet.

Tom_Spangler said:

dculberson said:

Dude, the city's lost over a third of its population since the 1950s. That's rough. I had no idea. In the same time my city has almost tripled in size. What a contrast. It could happen anywhere, too..

That sounds bad until you look at Detroit, which was at 1.8M in the 50s and is now well under 700k. But Detroit is coming back, so I wouldn't give up on Baltimore yet.

I'm still kicking myself for not buying up Detroit when neighborhoods were selling for $2-3k. After the trip to Pimlico, I'm keeping an eye on commercial and residential properties in the area.

Baltimore and Milwaukee 

Two of my favorite American cities.

The hipsters won't let them die, but they'll never be the same again. I'm probably not the first generation to think that.

Been to Inner Harbor, it was okay. Just don't venture too far outside.

Went to the B&O museum (excellent) but was threatened by a resident while walking down the street because I foolishly wore a team-other-than-the-Ravens jacket. Thanks, dude. Won't be back to your city ever again. Especially since they won't let me carry.

I'd rather go to Philly any day. And I don't much like Philly.