Hey.....Check out Baltimore?!?!?!

[dominimami305]

As a current resident of baltimore, I was really impressed with the events that have been going on the past 2 weeks. Me and my friends are always saying, " 'what are we gonna do?' 'man... this baltimore. THERES NOTHING BUT TROUBLE TO GET INTO!!' 'yea... i cant stand this place!!' "

During the past two weeks we've had the Dew Tour '07 stop in Baltimore, and just this past weekend the African American Festival. I was actually made aware of the publicity while watching FOX 45 news this morning. They mentioned how it was well put together and how much money it raised for the city. Is the money really going to the city and put to good use?..... thats a whole different thread (or not).

I wanted to know what are some events in your cities that bring revenue and beneficial awareness of the good things your city has to offer (and why you someone should live and work there)? Another point the news anchor made was that, there were no sporting events going on during the past 2 weeks, and Baltimore was still able to make money and bring out around 500K people to the city.

So, what do you do??

[Tranplanner]

Baltimore is a city I've been meaning to go back and visit...along with pretty much all of the east coast cities. Last time I was there the waterfront redevelopment was just starting and most of the city seemed like a not-so-great place to visit.

Ottawa tends to draw a good tourist trade just because of its stature as a national capital, but there are a lot of events throughout the year that are put on to attract even more people to the city...bluesfest, jazz festival, tulip festival, race weekend, winterlude.

[SuperPenguin]

Well, I'm bummed out that we lost the Volvo Ocean Race. I enjoy seeing things that play to Baltimore's maritime heritage and make full use of it's location, the harbor, etc.

Oh, coming up soon, Artscape. http://www.artscape.org/ A great and free public arts festival thing, with visual arts, music, all sorts of wild stuff.

Hmm. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head right now.

[SuperPenguin]

Yep, from the pictures, it looks like there's a bit of a similarity.

[bncrain]

The City Paper recently had an article on B-more's new master plan...I will go find the link.

...

http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=13790

There we go. It's long, but good. I am slowly starting to think that Baltimore might be one of the quiet, unsung heroes of American city planning. The Inner Harbor gets occasional attention, but the city appears to be going through some really serious revitalization...and things like what is discussed in the aforementioned article and that awesome Live in Baltimore campaign make me think that it's not by accident. I tend to dislike cities marketing themselves by saying "Hey, we're less expensive than X," but Baltimore's efforts to draw people from the DC area are more clever than that.

[PennPlanner]

Since I am from Baltimore, I'm one of the few who bothered to read the master plan (well, skim through it).

It's a nice piece of work with a gimmicky slogan (Live, Eat, Work, Play), but it didn't leave me with with an overall positive impression, and I told myself that it's one of those fancy plans that will quickly be forgotten in a few years' time.

Why?

Well, a large part of the plan rests on the assumption that Baltimore's population will grow instead of declining. Fact, that ain't gonna happen. BRAC is not going to bring tens of thousands of people to the city, and why? Schools and crime. True, crime is now largely contained with a few (large) sectors of the city, but the city schools are for the most part absolute nightmares. Well-paying BRAC workers are going to head straight for the suburbs where they can trust the schools.

Second, while BRAC will bring some new residents interested in the urban lifestyle, the phenomena of shrinking households and changing demographics means that most cities across the nation continue to lose residents. Washington, DC is possibly the best example of a turn-around city, going from absolute despair to astonishing redevelopment and regrowth, but DC is still experienceing a shrinking population, and the same goes for Boston, another highly touted "successful" urban city. Why? The new residents are mostly singles and young couples. The families are still heading straight for the suburbs. In Baltimore, most of the good folks in Canton and Federal Hill will be moving to Harford or Howard County once junior comes along, and they will be hopping and skipping right over the large tracts of 1920s and 1930s single family neighborhoods in the NE and the NW corridors of the city. The more affluent will buy in the the upscale areas of Roland Park and Homeland, but they're the people who can shell out 20K tuitions for private schools.

There were things about the plan I liked, and being ambitious is always a good thing, but the plan more or less ignored the reality that unless substantial changes are made to the Baltimore public schools, the city will never retain and attract families with children. Without that, the city's population will never grow to 808,000, but instead continue to slowly decline (didn't Baltimore just lose another 5,000 residents in 2006, according to Census data?). My estimate is that the city will eventually settle around in the mid 500s. I would be much more impressed with a plan that was actually honest about the difficulties in attracting and retaining families, and say, well, that's not gonna happen over the next ten or twenty years. A plan that focused mostly on attracting childless yuppies (the booming areas of Baltimore is because of childless yuppies), and stabilizing (if possible) the poor tracts of the city, would be just fine for Baltimore.

[SuperPenguin]

Want to see change? Want to see the realities of the city acknowledged and addressed? Vote for me when I run for mayor!

(I'll be the penguin in the cape!)

[Planning Fool]

As a current resident of baltimore, I was really impressed with the events that have been going on the past 2 weeks. Me and my friends are always saying, " 'what are we gonna do?' 'man... this baltimore. THERES NOTHING BUT TROUBLE TO GET INTO!!' 'yea... i cant stand this place!!' "

During the past two weeks we've had the Dew Tour '07 stop in Baltimore, and just this past weekend the African American Festival. I was actually made aware of the publicity while watching FOX 45 news this morning. They mentioned how it was well put together and how much money it raised for the city. Is the money really going to the city and put to good use?..... thats a whole different thread (or not).

I wanted to know what are some events in your cities that bring revenue and beneficial awareness of the good things your city has to offer (and why you someone should live and work there)? Another point the news anchor made was that, there were no sporting events going on during the past 2 weeks, and Baltimore was still able to make money and bring out around 500K people to the city.

So, what do you do??

Sorry for being off topic, but speaking of Baltimore, have you been to the aquarium? If so, what did you think? I've been meaning to make the trip up from Fairfax to check it out.

[SuperPenguin]

Sorry for being off topic, but speaking of Baltimore, have you been to the aquarium? If so, what did you think? I've been meaning to make the trip up from Fairfax to check it out.

Long lines, buy tickets in advance if possible. Seriously. They sell tickets for admission at different times (every half hour or something), and sometimes they sell out early. Even if they don't sell out, you might buy a ticket at 11:00 and it'll be for a 2:00 entry. http://www.aqua.org/

I haven't been recently, so I can't say if the new exhibits like the Outback are any good. Still, it's a good time. Catch a dolphin show.

Plus, there's plenty of other stuff to do in the immediate vicinity at the Inner Harbor.

[Planning Fool]

Long lines, buy tickets in advance if possible. Seriously. They sell tickets for admission at different times (every half hour or something), and sometimes they sell out early. Even if they don't sell out, you might buy a ticket at 11:00 and it'll be for a 2:00 entry. http://www.aqua.org/

I haven't been recently, so I can't say if the new exhibits like the Outback are any good. Still, it's a good time. Catch a dolphin show.

Plus, there's plenty of other stuff to do in the immediate vicinity at the Inner Harbor.

Thanks......I'm definitely a fan of the Inner Harbor area....I need to make a trip up that way soon.