Baltimore: Urbanisms of Inclusion

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Leuven, 2011
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Faculty of Engineering
Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning [ASRO]
The New School New York
Parsons The New School for Design
Atlantis Exchange Program
BALTIMORE: URBANISMS OF INCLUSION
Sven Augusteyns - Ben Dirickx - Esther Jaocbs
Thesis submitted to obtain: Master in Urbanism and Strategic Planning [MaUSP]
Academic year: 2010-2011
Promotors: Prof. Bruno De Meulder
Prof. Brian Mc. Grath
4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A number of people have been responsible for the
complicated task of arranging our exchange to the USA.
Firstly we would like to thank Brian McGrath, Miodrag
Mitrasinovic, Bruno De Meulder and Kelly Shannon for
setting up this interesting programme. In this respect
we would like to thank as well Isabelle Putseys for her
organizational strength in cooperation with Miodrag
coping with the administrative complexities
Once in New York the continuing organizational challenges
were easily handled by Miodrag Mitrasinovic and Robin
Campbell who were our anchor in Manhattans Rush.
Furthermore we would like to thank the team that has
been important in the progress of our research process.
Besides an amazing academic infrastructure, the New
School provided us with an interdisciplinary approach
through a set of professionals who were able to relate to
our project in a variety of ways. Special thanks go to our
promotor Brian who, with his communicative strengths,
has put us into contact with many other professionals like
Victoria Marchall, Aseem Inaam, Graham Shane, Glenn L.
Smith, Stuard Picket, J. Morgan Grove, Bill Morrish, Miguel
Robles Duran, ... Miodrag as well had a strong impact on
our design progress through our regular encounters in
and around the schools facility.
On a regular basis we went to explore Baltimore on
site to perform feldwork. These experiences helped us
tremendously in understanding the complexity of the
Baltimore case. Without the help of some really good
friends, we have made there, we would not have been
so successful at understanding the city. Special thanks
go to Amie and Zoe West who with their hospitality and
openness have shown us a great part of the city, as well
as to Joe McGinley who with his contagious enthusiasm
for Baltimore gave us the energy to dive into the project.
Thanks go out as well to the spontaneous hospitality of
our local host Joe M. Reinhart.
Further technical support with obtaining the right amount
of information was provided by Liz Barry, a genius with
GIS. And we would like to thank Eugene Kwak for his help
with presentational and structuring skills.
Once back in Belgium, in the continuation and fnalization
of our thesis, we could count on the professionalism of
Bruno De Meulder. Our gratitude goes out to him for
guiding us through the last struggles towards completion.
Last but not least, besides these professionals, we would
like to say thanks to our families and friends for their help
and support. We are especially grateful to our parents
for giving us the opportunity to persue our ambitions and
international experiences. There are not enough words
that can equal their endless efforts and patience, but in
this way, we would like to express our appreciation and
gratitude.
5
TRAJECTORY
Within the scope of the ATLANTIS exchange project, we
were offered the opportunity to work on Baltimore on our
thesis. After some organizational diffculties we ended
up carrying out this exchange programme from the New
York based Parsons The New School for Design. We
arrived in New York in the beginning of February and
immediately were thrown into the extremely vibrant and
energetic atmosphere of both Parsons and New York city.
The combination of getting settled and exploring our new
environments was both exciting and exhausting.
The main advisor for our thesis project was Brian McGrath
who with his involvement in the Baltimore Ecosystems
Study (BES) had many contacts and resources at hand
for us to explore and use for our research. With Baltimore
as our context, we were set out to focus on what the term
Urbanisms of Inclusion, the theme of the thesis, could
mean in this context. Meanwhile a group of students
back in Belgium worked on this same thematic but within
the context of Brussels. This strategy aimed to explore
what differences and similarities can be found between
the European and North-American context and how this
infuences the possible design strategies.
Besides our main occupation with this research on
Baltimore all three of us attended Dilip Da Cunhas class
on Nature and Environment which took us into the world
of multiple understandings of these two ambiguous words
and their relation to designerly thinking. The project
we made for this class gave us the chance to look at
Baltimore on a regional scale and understanding this
region as a complex ecological system closely related to
the Chesapeake Bay.
As a third component we strategically decided that the
class we picked, would be an individual one so that
when looking at Baltimore we would have some personal
input derived from each of these classes. Esther followed
Principles of Environmental Science, Sven; Designing
Collaborative Development and Ben; Civil Society and
International Development. Luckily The New School
encouraged us to choose classes from all departments
of the school which allowed us to seek for different
disciplines that would beneft the making of this thesis.
Additionally we were encouraged to attend many of the
lectures and discussion panels given within and outside
the school which broadened our mind even more.
We presented the fnal work we produced in the USA to an
extensive jury on May 9th. This jury consisted of Graham
Shane [Columbia University], Bill Morrish, Miguel Robles
Duran, Cynthia Lawson and Fabiola Berdiel [Parsons],
Gorgeen Theodore [Interboro], Glenn Smith [MSU].
Receiving great comments from this jury in an extensive
collaborative discussion, we were excited to continue our
work after going back to Belgium. But frst the delegation
of students working on Brussels context few over to New
York to cooperate with us in a workshop organized with
the purpose of exchanging information on Urbanisms of
Inclusion and its meaning in both distinct contexts.
Back in Belgium we continued with the design project
individually under the guidance of Bruno De Meulder,
handing in the fnal thesis on August 22nd 2011.
In September we will fy back to New York with the
intention to display our thesis and by this means bring
back our ideas to the site so it may have the potential of
going beyond a fnished academic product.
6
STRUCTURE
Our experience was split up in two parts, the frst part
within the context of the USA and the second part returning
to our home university in Leuven, Belgium.
The thesis is divided into four chapters of which the frst
two are basically the research we have done in the USA,
the third chapter is the point where we were at the end
of our exchange to then fnalize with the fourth chapter
giving space to a more individualized approach with the
actual physical interventions. Each of these chapters
have subchapters, discussing specifc themes related to
Baltimore.
Chapter 1: Baltimore Histories develops a discourse
on what we can learn from the past. The frst part will
approach Baltimore through a narrative on the different
physical and social oppositions that can be found by
exploring the city. The second part came about by a more
thorough analysis of the urban history of Baltimore and
discusses Baltimores history from the point of view of
social exclusion.
Chapter 2: East Baltimore Stories approaches the city
from what there is to be found today. For this we found
it necessary to scale down to a more apprehensible
part of the city and chose East Baltimore as our case.
The frst two parts, called Walks and Talks, are a more
personal approach to the city in which we tried to
encounter practices and stories of inclusion/exclusion,
based on profound feldwork. After that, the part on civil
society displays a thorough analysis of civil society in East
Baltimore and how it functions. This we found necessary
to further understand our scope of intervention.
At this point we felt it was time to come to a design
conclusion in which we sought for a schematical
organization of all previously processed information and
questioned ourselves what we as designers could do in
this context.
Chapter 3: East Baltimore Mirrored provides this
schematic representation, which is a springboard into the
design interventions.
Chapter 4: East Baltimore futures is the fnal chapter and
concerns these design interventions. We decided it to be
fruitful to continue the thesis on a semi-individual basis to
each come to our personal interventions, based on the
strong common foundations we laid in the United States.
This is why this chapter is divided into three parts. The
frst one is Esthers approach; Grids: Of Planning and
Planting. The second one by Sven is called Harvesting
East Baltimores Water Landscape and the third one by
Ben is Learning [the] Landscape. By each taking our own
individual entrypoints we have created numerous ideas
and visions for the future of Baltimore which we hope can
infuence the view of decision makers and the residents by
showing the potentials that are embedded in the physical
and social tissue of East Baltimore.
Baltimore city of opposites.
an introduction.
Baltimore city of exclusion.
a history.
Fieldwork East Baltimore
walks.
talks.
Civil Society in East Baltimore
civility, public sphere and social organization.
stakeholders: programmatic activities.
stakeholders: physical presence.
civil society and design.
East Baltimore Infrastructures.
physical effects.
BALTIMORE HISTORIES
What can we learn from yesterday?
EAST BALTIMORE STORIES
What can we learn from today?
Grids: of Planning & Planting
Esther Jacobs
Harvesting East Baltimores Waterscape
Sven Augusteyns
Learning [the] Landscape
Ben Dirickx
EAST BALTIMORE MIRRORED
Reflecting on design strategies.
EAST BALTIMORE FUTURES
Visions for tomorrow.
Conclusions
Common Strategies
Goals
Individual Strategy
Baltimore city of opposites.
an introduction.
Baltimore city of exclusion.
a history.
Baltimore Histories
What can we learn from yesterday?
Boston
New York
Philadelphia
Baltimore
Washington DC
100 300 km
1. Baltimore, MD, East Coast, USA
Baltimore City of Opposites
an introduction.
Baltimore today is a city of opposites, opposites that grew
historically and naturally by processes present in many
former industrial cities on Americas East Coast. It is a city
of hope and despair, potential and frustration. It evolved
from a thriving manufacturing city in the 1940s and the
1950s, to a shrinking city from the 1970s up until today.
Baltimore suffers from all the illnesses of a shrinking city
such as unemployment, extreme poverty, crime,...however
it also has potential.
This potential lays in the presence of big institutions in
the city, like Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins
University for example, but also in the compassionate
and hard working Baltimore residents. Unfortunately it are
the ills like the drug and gang culture, present in some
neighborhoods, that receive a disproportionate amount
of attention (Park, 2005). This is the Baltimore everyone
knows from popular tv-shows like the Wire.
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1920
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620.961 inh.
651.154
736.014
786.775
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1920
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620.961 inh.
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736.014
786.775
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859.100
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Baltimore City 1910
area 60 sq. km
population 558.485 inh
density 9308 /sq. km
Baltimore City 2010
area 238,5 sq. km
population 620.961 inh
density 2602 /sq. km
2. Baltimore, shrinking city
neighbors and chatting amicably. Little elements such
as lanterns by the door indicate someone is home and
light up the public streetscape at night. The policing in
the distressed neighborhoods, on the other hand, is one
of a very repressive nature. Police surveillance cameras
accompanied by fashing blue lights can be found on
street corners. Police patrol the streets in the safety of
their cars when necessary. Neighborhood residents hang
signs up in the window saying stop shooting, start living,
no loitering,..
The differences in social control over public spaces are
visible in the physical raum as well. Public spaces in the
city and suburbs have inviting benches to sit and trees
for shade. They are perceived as very welcoming. In poor
neighborhoods however, we fnd people wary of using the
available public space. They no longer feel safe, so public
spaces in these areas are not really public anymore.
When taking a quick tour around the city, one can get a
hint of the inequalities that are present in the city simply
by looking at the urban fabric.
Baltimore is known as the rowhouse city, however this
rowhouse typology is present in many forms. On the one
hand, there are the wealthy neighborhoods built up with
rowhouses in the gentrifed areas around the parks and
the inner harbour. On the other hand, we fnd a fabric of
distressed rowhouses, primarily located along the old
railroads built during World War II, when the steel industry
in Baltimore was booming.
Social control and policing in these two environments are
very different. Whereas in the wealthy neighborhoods
we fnd police walking the streets on foot, greeting
3. Johns Hopkins vs. abandoned factories
4. wealthy vs. distressed rowhouses
5. social control
14
Benches are banned from the street and parkscape to
discourage gatherings of people, trees are not wanted
because they can block visibility, public institutions are
fenced and guarded and have little to no interaction with
the outside space.
Like many post manufacturing cities, urban redevelopment
in the 1970s led to a polarized city with a rich vertical
inner core surrounded by a belt of abandoned houses, in
turn surrounded by the edge city.
This development was fed by a switch in mode of
transportation in the 1950s. Baltimore went from a city
with a well functioning public transport system, to a city
focused on the car. Which created a city ented on highway
infrastructures.
These highway infrastructures soon became paths along
which big box developments, strip malls and hypermarkets
would settle, offering big quantities of food and other
goods for low prices. This made it very diffcult for inner
city supermarkets and local neighborhood cornershops
to survive. People in lower class neighborhoods, with very
limited transportation became more and more deprived of
good, cheap and healthy food. Making life in these areas
even harder.
6. green vs. rocky public space
7. vertical vs. horizontal city
8. public transport vs. car city
9. cornershop vs. supermarket
15
16
between neighborhoods. The following chapter sums up
a selection of important moments in history that created
these inequalities. It will become clear that the city evolved
from a city segregated by race towards a city segregated
by economic status.
When we look at the maps of the census tracts of the
city of Baltimore, they clearly show where the areas of
exclusion in Baltimore are located.
The map of the medium home values shows that values
are high in the center and at the edge of the city, and
that there is a ring around the city center with extremely
low home values. The map with the percentage of vacant
homes is nearly the inverse fgure of the map with medium
home values. With the percentage of vacant homes in the
dark areas 23% or more. The maps show that the areas
with low home values (light color in map 1) and a high
percentage of vacant homes (dark color in map 2) are
also the areas with between 6% and 41% of vacant lots.
From the census tracts we can clearly derive the areas
where the city is shrinking. This outward migration causes
declining tax revenues and rising public expenditures for
the social and technical infrastructure in these areas.
The percentage of home ownership clearly shows the
city/suburb dichotomy. Where home ownership in the city
center and ring around it is 20% or less, in the suburbs
we fnd percentages of home ownerships between 60%
and 100%.
What are the processes that created these inequalities
and that turned Baltimore into this city of exclusion? The
places of exclusion in the city were formed by much more
than changes in technology and economic changes.
The underlying layer of politics and psychological
boundaries put up by politicians and developers
throughout history resulted in a severe social segregation
10. Median Home Value Sales 11. % Vacant Homes
12. % Home Ownership 13. % Vacant Lots
$ 45.000 or less
$ 45.000 - $ 150.000
$ 150.000 - $ 300.000
$ 300.000 - $ 600.000
$ 600.000 or more
0 %
2% or less
2% - 6%
6% - 23%
23% or more
20% or less
20% - 40%
40% - 60%
60% - 80%
80% - 100%
0 %
1% or less
1% - 2%
2% - 6%
6% - 41%
17
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Baltimore City of Exclusion
a history.
In 1827, Baltimore was founded as city on the falls. It
was an equal city, throughout the 18th and early 19th
century, meaning that Baltimore housing was not really
segregated between black and white residents. Blacks
were a minority but lived equally distributed over all 20
wards. This balance remained, even in the period after
the Civil War (1861-1865).
In the 1890s, urbanization was to modify this fuid mixture.
In the twenty year period between 1880 and 1900,
Baltimores black population went up 47% from 54.000
to 79.000, however white population went up 54%. This
means that although the citys black population rose, the
proportion of blacks went down and so they remained a
minority group. These black newcomers had little money
and little job opportunity, which made them all gather in
the cheapest housing
in town. This resulted
in the frst black slum
in 1890. The slum was
characterized by bad
housingconditions, bad
infrastructure, bad water
provision,... all this led
to various diseases. It
became conventional
for developers and
politicians, to relate
the black population
to the urban illnesses in the city, and to run from their
responsibilities. The general idea was that poverty
creates slums and not slums create poverty. The
competition for space between blacks and whites led
14. first housing segregation act
CLIPPER MILL
HAMPDEN MILL
MT. WASHINGON MILL
ROCKLAND MILL
GRIST MILL
MILFORD MILL
POWHATTAN
MILLS
FALL LINE
15. 1827, Baltimore: city on the falls
20
to the frst segregation act in 1911. This segregation act
turned Baltimore into a city segregated by race. Over time
this act gets developed and more acts follow.
The next major shift towards the excluded city is the act
of redlining (1945-1968), which basically is the act of
delineating areas that banks should not invest in. Along
with redlining comes the phenomenon of blockbusting.
Blockbusting is the event where urban developers prey
on racial anxieties. In areas close to expanding black
neighborhoods, developers would approach white
residents with the question to sell their house at low prices.
Once these houses are in the hands of the developers,
they get instantly sold or rented out to black residents at
a much higher price. The developers use the presence of
black residents to draw upon the fears of racial change
among the remaining white residents with the argument
that property values would be going down. The resulting
phenomena of white residents leaving the city center for a
safe house in the suburbs is called the white fight.
The assassination of Martin Luther King, leader of the
American Civil rights movement on april 4th 1968 led
to a nationwide wave of riots in cities like Washington
D.C., Chicago, Kansas City, but also in Baltimore, where
by now the polarization between black and white had
become extreme. These riots now resulted in a fight to
the suburbs by the black middle class. This black fight
mostly affected the areas with low income residents.
In the meantime the population of the city reached a peak
in the 1950s. Baltimore at that time was the sixth largest
city in the US, providing 75% of all jobs in the region. Its
powerhouse was the steel industry, Bethlehem Steel being
the second largest steel company in the US at the time.
The rise and fall of Bethlehem Steel illustrates the
microcosmos of economic changes that affected
Baltimore. In its evolution we see a great boom during
World War II but a demise of steel fabrication during the
1970s when globalization began to affect manufacturing
activities in the US. In the 45 year period between 1950
and 1995, 100.000 manufacturing jobs disappeared in
Baltimore city. Which accounted for 75% of its industrial
development.
16. 1945, redlining
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city of ghettos equal city segregated city donut city repressive city
1729 Baltimore City on the Falls
1890 Urbanization wave, frst black ghetto
1911 First housing segregation act
1945-1968 Redlining, Blockbusting, White Flight
1968 Martin Luther King Riots, Black Flight
1950 Baltimore 6th largest city in the US
1916-2003 rise and fall of Bethlehem Steel
1970 - ... Neo-Liberalism
1970 -2005 inner harbor redevelopment
2005 Blue Lights Policing
2008 Housing Typologies
2008 Housing Bubble
1939-1945 World War II
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17. Baltimore: evolution of a city
22
The 1970s are characterized by neo-liberal policies,
which implied a stronger individualization of society.
These strategies are again benefting the wealthy and
making it much harder for minority groups to survive.
Neo-liberal policies have their effect on urban development
strategies in the form of private urban developments that
take place. In Baltimore this showed in the renovation
of the inner harbor between 1970 and 2005. Baltimore
becomes a repressive city with a rich inner center,
surrounded by a ring of poverty, in turn surrounded by rich
suburbs. Repressive actions are needed to safeguard the
inner harbor from surrounding areas which are breeding
grounds for crime and drugs. These repressive strategies
can be illustrated by the blue lights, a municipal camera
surveillance system.
The persistence of neo-liberal developments has led
to the housing bubble in 2008, resulting in a complete
standstill of urban development.
In 2005 Baltimores housing market typology was
developed by the citys planning department to assist
the city with strategically matching available public
resources to neighborhood housing market conditions.
It was updated in 2008 (Baltimore Planning Department,
2011) The map categorizes different neighborhoods in
Baltimore in distressed housing, transitional housing,
stable housing,... It informs neighborhood planning
efforts by helping neighborhood residents understand
the housing market forces impacting their communities.
Some tools, such as demolition, may be necessary in
distressed markets to bring about change in whole blocks
yet may be applied more selectively in stable markets on
properties that may lead to destabilization in the future.
(Baltimore Planning Department, 2011)
Unfortunately this map is interpreted different by
developers. On the website of the Dominion Group, we
can read the following quote:
The map allows for a much more informed
desktop underwriting experience for potential Baltimore
City real estate investors. There are several rules of thumb
to follow if youre a new investor in Baltimore City. Stay
out of Distressed areas. Period. Dont try to do a retail
fip in a Distressed or Transitional area. And the numbers
for cash-fowing rental properties probably wont work
18. 2008, housing typology map
competitive housing 1
competitive housing 2
emerging housing
stable housing 1
stable housing 2
transitional housing 1
transitional housing 2
distressed housing 1
distressed housing 2
multi-family housing
non-residential
> 20% vacant lots
parks
23
in Competitive or Emerging blocks. Focus on learning
Transitional and Stable areas, which are a real estate
investors bread and butter. (Dominion 2011)
The areas marked as distressed and transitional housing
on the map (indicated in red) are often referred to as
Baltimores Ring of Blight. Blight is an old term, a term
that still refers to the decay of the urban environment and
its relation to public health. A term which implies a certain
anxiety for these areas to infect more prosperous areas
with urban diseases such as crime, drugs, etc.
When we go on site to look at these areas we see that
there is a serious lack of accuracy in the map. These
areas are often scattered with abandoned houses and
know high crime crates but still contain good streets,
with a hardworking population trying to survive in these
neighborhoods.
The pictures show the example of East Baltimore. They
clearly show that one zone on the housingtypology map
contains very different urban environments.
One can conclude that this map is a latent tool that
stigmatizes certain areas even more, and thus can be
seen as a contemporary form of redlining.
19. transitional housing 1
20. transitional housing 2
21. distressed housing 1
22. distressed housing 2
24
The map of Baltimore today clearly shows how the city is a
palimpsest of the different historical events and processes
of growth discussed earlier.
Baltimore was founded as a city on the falls, on the edge of
the Chesapeake Bay. Nature was the agent that sparked
urbanization: the topography, the rivers, the Chesapeake
bay as safe haven from the ocean.
However urbanization colonized the landscape. People
drew lines, borders, imposed a grid structure, divided the
once unifying landscape in to zones.
The landscape, that once worked as one system of
meandering rivers, foodable lowlands, safer highlands,
marshes, etc. was transformed when creeks were
covered, highway infrastructures were built in riverbeds
because they pose the lowest difference in topography.
Baltimore once a city on the water, became a city that
turned its back on the water.
The stratifcation of the landscape by urbanization went
hand in hand with the stratifcation of society that was
discussed earlier. Big institutions would locate themselves
on the safe highlands, whereas the worker mans housing
was developed on the lower lands of the city, around
railroads and huge infrastructures that cut through these
valleys.
An interesting case are the neighborhoods of
EastBaltimore. Which today are located in Baltimores
Ring of blight and are overlooked by Johns Hopkins
Hospital.
This creates an interesting condition of exclusion.
Everyday thousands of people travel from the suburbs
surrounding Baltimore towards the hospital and pass
through the poor neighborhood of East Baltimore via the
large streets that cut through the neighborhood like North
Gay Street and the Pulaski Highway.
However there is not one point of interaction between
Johns Hopkins and the neighborhood.
Now that the historical frame is set, the following chapters
of the thesis will focus on this dichotomy in East Baltimore.
25
2011, Baltimore Today
23. 1827, Baltimore: city of exclusion
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References Baltimore Histories
Holcomb, E.L. (2005), The City as Suburb: A History of
Northeast Baltimore since 1660., Charlottesville, VA: The
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Kaminer, T. & Robles-Duran M. & Sohn H. (Eds.) (2011),
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Olson, S. (1997), Baltimore: the building of an American
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Park, K. & iCUE (ed.) (2005), Urban Ecology. Detroit and
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Shopes L. (1991)., The Baltimore Book: New Views of
Local History., Temple University Press.
Harvey, D., Social Justice and the City (2nd Edition ed.)
(2009), Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press.
Dominion (2011), A Must Have For Every Baltimore Real
Estate Investor , http://www.thedominiongroup.com/ (8
august 2011)
Baltimore Planning Department (2011) http://www.
baltimorecity.gov/Government/AgenciesDepartments/
P l a n n i n g / Ma s t e r P l a n s Ma p s P u b l i c a t i o n s /
HousingMarketTypology.aspx
What can we learn from today?
East Baltimore Stories
30
Our frst encounter with East Baltimore left us with mixed
emotions. None of us had ever seen such a devastated
neighborhood before. The power of exclusion and
hopelessness left entire blocks abandoned and without
any community services. Its hard to picture a thriving
future for this grim part of town.
Nevertheless it is our ambition to think beyond the decline
and debris. During our feldwork we try to search, as
Graham Shane has describes to us, for that one minute
practice or urban wonder in a sea of decline.
An isometric view of our feld of work, shows the
different spatial realities that we explored. Sketching
urban illnesses such as collapsed roofs, deteriorated
backsides, no loitering signs as well as more positive
marks of revitalization such as re inhabited houses. These
houses have a hard time as they are located between two
abandoned houses. They have to endure water leaks and
often heat both houses next to them as isolation is lacking.
A positive tendency is the block by block revitalization,
steered by neighborhood action coalitions, churches, etc.
They try to reverse the process of decline by buying
houses and refurbishing them again, while renting them
to less fortunate people. They intervene as well with minor
interventions such as a small corner park, tree planting,
painting of the facades and closing of the windows by
wooden panels in the hope it will make their block more
attractive for young families searching a cheap house.
One of the biggest problems for families is the high
crime rate, drug problematics and bad schools in the
neighborhood, along with the rather small size of the
housing and the absence of qualitative green space.
Walking East Baltimore
INFRASTRUCTURE
FIELDWORK
STAKEHOLDERS
HISTORY
31
24. Situation of isometric view 25. Isometric view of encounters during fieldwork in East Baltimore
26. Revived house in the midst of two abandoned houses 27. Deteriorated backsides
32
28. Smallest Car Wash in Baltimore 29. Doorsteps
30. Collapsed roofs, abandoned since 1970s 31. Declining corner shop
33
32. Railway Infrastructure 33. Corner Park without green or seating
34. Urban Courtyard 35. Collington Square Park
34
The Johnsons
Family left as well.
No way of maintaining
three children when
there is no income...
Tyrone ( 52 years ) lived in East Baltimore and saw all
the people in his neighborhood move out, searching for
job opportunities. At frst, he and many of his neighbors
worked at Bethlehem Steel. After it
shut down Tyrone got a bottom end
job at the airport, handling luggage
or tanking kerosene. Unfortunately,
as Tyrone refers, with the neo-liberal
policies, many of the jobs in the
private sector were replaced, causing that I and others
had to take several busses for more than one hour to get
to our job somewhere outside Baltimore. No wonder that
people got fed up and left the neighborhood. Would you
like living in a city without jobs?
East Baltimore Talks
36. Talk with Tyrone
INFRASTRUCTURE
FIELDWORK
STAKEHOLDERS
HISTORY
35
3 of my brothers
died, one is in jail.
I am the only one
left, but dont have
a house or job
We met Adam ( 30 years ) when we visited the food
garden in the interior square of a housing block of the
Amazing Grace church next to Monument Street. Adam
relies on charity of the church, where
he gets free food every Wednesday.
He does not have a house, after it
burned down and lives in a shelter.
The only income he has is informal
construction work and gardening, plus
begging for some bucks. He would like to start working
but he needs an identity card so he can be registered at
social security. But that will cost him 30$, money he does
not have...or money he has to give to his gang?
Shelbey ( 47 year ) is a youth counselor and knows
how gang life works in Baltimore. He speaks of a vicious
circle, where the only way out is death. The two dominating
gangs reigning in East Baltimore are
The Bloods and The Cribs. Young
children end up in a gang because
their parents can not afford to buy
them clothes or food. The dad is in jail,
the single mother is often on drugs and the grandmothers
are incapable of taking over. The drug-sponsored gang
can offer security but asks loyalty in return. 30$ Each
week and being a runner, carrying the drugs around.
Every week they
pay $30 to the gang.
Children dont have
a job so they rob.
37. Homeless guy in Baltimore 38. Shelbey waiting for the bus
36
East Baltimore lays on two hills separated by the railway
connecting Washington to New York and aligned by
two former creeks. The railroad was a major attractor
for speculative development in the area. Without all the
industry gathering around the railway, this area would
never have attracted so many immigrants at the turn of
the 20th century.
The Poppleton Grid (1816), a rectilinear stretched
chessboard pattern was overlaid on the sloping landscape,
waiting for developers to fll it in. The new neighborhoods
in East Baltimore were designed for a booming city, with
oversized roads (20m wide) aligned by 7 meter high row
houses. Provoking the image of a low rise neighborhood
that would be able to meet the demands of a growing city.
The Poppleton grid is intersected by several old turnpike
roads, like North Gay St and the Pulaski Highway, alligning
the lowest topographical lines. Broadway is major axis
that connects the northern hills to the bay.
On top of the highest hill Johns Hopkins Hospital was built
in 1889, on the outskirts of the city, overlooking agricultural
felds. The hospital was the frst to develop a piece of land
in East Baltimore and today fnds itself surrounded by
lower class neighborhoods.
The area is divided in two watersheds. The old creeks
are covered and were replaced by a network of storm
water drains. Trash and pollutants end up straight in the
Chesapeake Bay.
The parks (for example Patterson Park) were purposely
created on steep or swampy terrain because these areas
were not suitable for development.
Infrastructures East Baltimore
Spatial conditions of exclusion.
INFRASTRUCTURE
FIELDWORK
STAKEHOLDERS
HISTORY
37
Patterson Park
Northern Cemetry
N. Gaystreet
Pulaski Highway
Railroad to NYC
39. Infrastructure in East Baltimore
38
40. Johns Hopkins Hospital is located on the highest point
41. East Baltimore is located in two distinct watersheds 42. Topography , parks and Johns Hopkins (red) in East Baltimore
39
43. The railroad constructed on the lowest point
40
Building upon the Baltimore Histories section, here, we
continue looking at the presence of civil society in the
city today and its effects on developmental issues. Civil
society is an important player in the construction of a
thesis on Urbanisms of Inclusion because it forms the
key connecting aspect between decision makers and
residents. We intend to give an overview of this sector
in East Baltimore on the basis of three aspects; civility,
public sphere and social organization. After that we show
the programmatic activities and physical urban presence
of a few selected components of this civil society.
The standards of civility are defned by forms
of social interaction and order, including respect and
tolerance for others. In Baltimore these standards of
civility have severely suffered from former exclusionary
tactics and more recently, from the prevailing presence
of an organized criminal parallel society. A strong
separation of suburban versus urban life has diminished
social interaction between people from different parts of
society. A lack of neutral platforms for them to meet their
differences has gradually increased mutual disinterest
and even dislike. The sphere of unknown, unloved is a
prevailing line of thought. A visit to an evangelical church
has, in this respect, been an eye-opener in the sense that
even within this landscape, devoid of civility, places have
been created where unexpected social relations reappear.
Though not set in a neutral atmosphere, rather under the
eyes of God, the fascinating interconnection of people
who fed during the middle of the 20th centurys white
fight returning to this church and the people that currently
live in these neighborhoods was a very inspiring act of
Civility, Public Sphere and Social Organization
41
civility to say the least. Though one returning to suburbias
individualism and safety and the other to the devastating
realities of the surrounding distressed neighborhoods a
moment of mutual respect and support has been created
as a sign of hope for us to further think of ways to create
neutral grounds for these kind of interconnections and
a further diminution of stigmatizing theorizations of the
other.
The public sphere where people engage in social
relations beyond their own demographic characteristics
in Baltimore restrains itself to formal platforms created by
non proft organizations or religious groups. As mentioned
in the previous paragraph these religious places function
quite well in elevating the devastating situations of some
of the inhabitants. Nevertheless their request for an active
involvement in religious activities does not do justice to the
level of freedom these places should be able to provide.
Places non-dependent on any formality or religious beliefs
are a rare occasion in Baltimore. Especially in the deprived
areas. The lack of informal public spaces where the non-
defnition of activity leaves the freedom and power to the
people to charge these places with their own interest is a
basic lack of a place for civil society to take on a healthy
form.
Social organization, as the section Baltimore Histories
already showed, severely struggled with a decline in civil
rights along with the shift in economy. Together with this,
the weakening of the state further undermined the basic
civil care for those in need of it. An incredible amount
of networked organizations gave rise to a safety net for
some of these people in deprived situations. Unregarded
the extent of this network reality shows the insuffciency
of these social movements. In conversation with a youth
counselor in downtown Baltimore a striking reality within
the family sphere is put to the fore which portrays this
insuffciency. Mothers working double shifts to pay the bills
while husbands are incarcerated may be a very strong
stigma and an extreme example but many family situations
resemble this structure. The incapacity for these mothers
to combine motherhood and basic provisional tasks for
their families results in their children being addressed to
life on the streets. A few can be referred to after school
programs but already at a young age a recruiting from
the criminal sphere tears these children away from these
formal after school programs. If it were not for the attractive
incentives provided by these criminals, civil society would
not have to struggle so hard to keep them out of this
vicious circle. Basic provisions like clothes and food but
also safety, which their family structure fails to provide,
are easily provided by these criminal organizations to lure
them into their area of infuence. The interest from their
side in children at a young age is their status as a minor
in the criminal justice system. For these children to enjoy
these provisions, a weekly fee is requested to pay to the
gang. A complex reality of power relations is created
where these children automatically turn to criminal acts to
provide this fee to their new family structure in order to
get their basic needs fulflled. It is with great awe that we
notice that state, civil society and the private sphere fail in
providing such basic human rights insofar that, ironically,
the criminal sphere, however distorted that may be, has
the capacity to take on this task.
42
Food | 1 First of all we have the commercial strip of
Monument Street with the North East Market. The nutritional
value of the food provision here is signifcantly poor
resulting in what one could call a food swamp. 2 Other
organizations that concern themselves with food are for
instance the HEBCAC that plans to develop a commissary
serving all the schools in Baltimore. This project would
be developed in combination with urban agriculture
felds making use of the vacant lots. 3 Churches, such
as the Amazing Grace Evangelica Church, on a smaller
scale but nonetheless have an important impact on food
security in East Baltimore by producing on a small scale
and distributing from their own pantries to those in need.
4 The Maryland Food Bank on its hand supports the
majority of these initiatives directly or indirectly.
Stakeholders Programmatic Activities
43
Environment | 1 HEBCAC organizes events such
as tree plantings and neighborhood cleanups to improve
the living environment. 2 The Amazing Grace Church
does efforts of cleaning up its inner courtyard and create
a little piece of heaven, as they call it, in its back yard
by greening it with the purpose of producing food and
creating a recreational value.
As one can see, there is poor coverage of the
environmental problems in the area. Nevertheless we
think that respect to the natural structures and resolving
the related environmental problems in a strategic way
might be a key to identity and respect to the place where
people live in. Creating civil society through the tackling of
environmental potentials can be a key strategy to solving
many of the urban illnesses East Baltimore deals with
today.
Housing | 1 The EBDI, the development company
of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, that is concerned with
the new plans of extending the hospital to the north.
With the housing bubble of 2008, the development
has come to a pause. Nevertheless they have already
constructed housing for elderly and families. Currently a
massive student housing complex is being constructed
as well. 2 Also the HEBCAC is concerned with certain
developments, be it on a smaller scale. For instance their
Eager Street Housing Project is a public housing project
at the scale of the typical Baltimore rowhouses.
44
Crime | 1 The EBDI guards its own terrain by patrolling
through the neighborhood they plan to develop. day and
night. 2 The Johns Hopkins facility is being guarded at
every entrance. This gives a very repressive image to
crime prevention in East Baltimore. 3 One of the most
striking forms of crime fghting is the implementation
of the blue lights as a network of surveillance cameras
throughout the urban tissue. 4 A variety of root based
anti-crime initiatives are based in, for instance, a JH Drug
Program working on drug prevention and the HEBCAC,
with its Dees Place initiative. The Door on its hand
provides educational workshops that try to reduce the
adolescent risks of getting caught up in the crime scene.
An important notion we experienced in our feld work
is that most actions against crime are organized in a
repressive way.
Employment | 1 With about 13.000 employees, the
major employer of Baltimore is Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Located within an area where employment is one of
the greatest problems this states yet another striking
contradiction. 2 The Doors Leaders of Tomorrow
provides the necessary skills for adolescent boys to
develop their character and reduce adolescent risk
factors (peer pressure, sex, violence, etc.) and increase
success factors (education, future careers, and family
appreciation). 3 The HEBCAC provides job readiness
classes and job placement services as well as career
training in high growth industries. 4 The HEBCAC also
plans the commissary which as well forms an opportunity
for new jobs in the area of East Baltimore.
45
Youth | 1 As mentioned before the Johns Hopkins
Drug Program deals with preventing substance abuse,
especially focusing on families. 2 Elev8 Baltimore, an
initiative of EBDI, partners with schools and the community
to make sure that every student is ready to succeed in
high school. 3 The Door organizes after school programs
in cooperation with the schools. It also engages the
youth in skill development and physical exercise. 4 The
Club is another example of an organization that deals
with creating a platform for children to have after school
occupation.
Four elementary/middle schools provide education
in this area we focussed on; Collington Square, Dr.
Rayner Browne, Tench Tilghman and the East Baltimore
Community School. Centrally located there is a department
of MICA called MICA PLACE which provides graduate
education in social design and community development
linked with art and culture.
Health | 1 Of course, the principal player in the health
care in Baltimore is Johns Hopkins Hospital. 2 Because
of the high threshold of the Johns Hopkins facility a
smaller but to the East Baltimore inhabitants, much more
signifcant medical health clinic emerged, the Charm City
Clinic. This clinic takes upon itself the task of helping
people getting proper medical help and health care plans.
3 Other organizations like the HEBCAC create initiatives
like Dees Place that deal with health in a more indirect
way by dealing with drug problems for example.
46
Johns Hopkins Hospital | This medical campus
belongs to one of the most renown hospital facilities in the
USA. It covers a superblock located on the highest point in
East Baltimore, visible from every angle. It has drastically
altered the grid to meet its needs. Major traffc arteries
connect the facility with its 13 000 employees, most of
them commuting from the suburbs. As a consequence
a vast amount of parking lots have been constructed
around the hospital to hold these commuters cars during
working hours.
44. East-West section over Monument St.
45. Isometric view on Johns Hopkins Hospital
Stakeholders Physical Presence
47
EBDI | East Baltimore Development Inc. is a nonproft
organization that is leading the transformation of an area
north of the Johns Hopkins Medical Campus.
Under Johns Hopkins leadership, the EBDI - the largest
redevelopment project ever undertaken in Baltimore
seeks to reverse historic trends and transforms the
disinvested neighborhood into a thriving mixed-income
community for families, businesses and public institutions.
But the organization has quite ruthlessly destroyed much
of the urban tissue leaving behind an open landscape
void of any urban activity and which, for now,will not be
developed because of the economic downturn.
2004
Completed / under construction
Planned phase [2]
Planned phase [1]
Urban voids
2009
46. Erasure of urban tissue between 2004 and 2009
47. Isometric view on EBDI 48. Isometric view on EBDI - Development Plan
48
HEBCAC | The Historic East Baltimore Community
Action Coalition, Inc., is a nonproft community
development organization founded in 1994 by Johns
Hopkins University, city and state offcials and East
Baltimore residents. Its mission is to work with residents
and other stakeholders to improve neighborhoods in the
220-block area bounded by Edison Highway, Aisquith
Street, North Avenue, and Fayette Street. Since its
founding HEBCAC has implemented a series of programs
that address both the physical infrastructure and human
capital issues faced by residents of the neighborhoods
within which it works.
One of their accomplishments is the community center at
N. Milton Ave. (see image below), which houses several
non-proft organizations involved in community services.
In fact their interest in buildings with historical industrial
character serves the purpose of reestablishing East
Baltimores identity through its past. A meeting with the
program director portrayed that their program has the
potential of becoming an important structering strategy
but up till now is being executed in a very fragmented
way.
49. Isometric view on HEBCAC 50. Isometric view on HEBCAC - Community Center
49
Education | East-Baltimores school system is equally
distributed over the urban tissue [The Collington Square,
Dr. Rayner Browne, Tench Tilghman Elementary Schools,
the East Baltimore Community School, MICA PLACE and
the Johns Hopkins Medical Education facilities]. Overall
Baltimore can depend on a very good educational
provision, an example for the nation. Nevertheless, in East-
Baltimore the urban ills, organized crime and substance
abuse problems put the schools in a dire position. In an
attempt to provide a safe haven for the children, away
from the many societal ills present in the surroundings,
schools try to avoid use of public infrastructure.
51. Isometric view on the educational landscape
52. Great Kids Great Schools
53. Collington Square Elementary School
50
Churches | The Amazing Grace Evangelica Lutheran
Church is a great example of community engagement
linked to religious activities. In fact on one of our on-site
researches in East Baltimore we attended a mass. This
happened to be on Palm Sunday. We witnessed a place
where mutual respect and willingness to help another out,
laid the basis of a great community feeling.
Former, mostly white, residents of East Baltimore come
back to this church regularly to help out the community
they once grew up in. The church has, in this sense,
created a great connection between the suburbs and this
distressed neighborhood.
Further the church has transformed an inner block into an
oasis with some agricultural activity and playing grounds
for the children. It has opened up this block to give space
to community activities.
54. Normal block 55. Amazing Grace Church block
56. Isometric view on religious facilities
51
Baltimore Super Pride | The collapse of Super Pride
Markets is notable because for many of its 30 years, the
Baltimore-based chain was the countrys largest black-
owned supermarket chain. The closing of these markets
had a major impact on East Baltimores affordable and
nearby food provision. With the closing of all stores
many inner-city neighborhoods have become deprived
of a supermarket within walking distance. These smaller
chains, as opposed to the suburban strip-mall type of
stores, often are the only convenient source of meats,
vegetables and fruit in neighborhoods where residents are
on limited incomes and without personal transportation.
[The Baltimore Sun, 2000] We have taken this facility as
part of our stakeholder analysis because it is a symbol of
how thriving this neighborhood once must have been and
at the same time a symbol of how bad decisionmaking
and neoliberal policies have destoyed this important
facility for the residents of the neighborhood.
MARKET
57. Logo Baltimore Super Pride markets
58. Isometric view on the Super Pride market
52
Could it be that, with the current economic downturn, it
is time to rethink the capacity of civil society, which in
East Baltimore seems to be the sole set of stakeholders
committed to the elevation of the depriving issues many
of its inhabitants deal with?
An effective approach to institutional change, including
change in the institutions of civil society according to
Foucault (1988: 18), with direct reference to Habermas,
is not trying to dissolve [relations of power] in the utopia
of a perfectly transparent communication, but to give
the rules of law, the techniques of management, and also
the ethics, which would allow these games of power to be
played with a minimum of domination.
In search of this minimum of domination a maximum of
variation in stakeholders at various levels should be
involved in the reinvestment in civil society in Baltimore.
The coming together of these stakeholders should, to
our opinion, be organized on neutral platforms in close
relation to the realities it ought to question. As designers,
may it be in defense of our own profession, we believe
that designerly thinking might actually have the capacity
to create this neutral platform. The urbanist and the
architect have been stripped of much of their means of
affecting any aspect of life which has social meaning; their
role has shrunk to a form of city-branding, addressing the
packaging of buildings and cities rather than their (social)
content. Architects and urban designers should transcend
their current market and image driven strategies,
overcome the pressures on urban development from the
economic powerhouse and become more knowledgeable
Civil Society and Design
53
of the ability to steer urban transformation via political,
social or economic endeavors. If designers can see
themselves as part of the human agency that construct
the realm of society, they could fnd themselves becoming
the creators of these neutral platforms on which a new
healthy civil society can be constructed. The search for a
meaningful urbanity is a common search which wishes to
identify alternative options, strategies and methodologies
which offer social and political commitment and a route to
the betterment of the city and society.
If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who
profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation,
are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want
the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This
struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one;
or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a
struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It
never did and it never will. [1849 | Douglass, F.]
References
Deb, D. (2009). Chapter 1 - The Doctrine of Development. In D. Deb,
Beyond Developmentality - Constructing Inclusive Freedom and
Sustainability (pp. 14-53). Sterling, VA: Earthscan.
Dirickx, B. (2011). Civil Society and Developmental Practices in
Baltimore - A History, a Present, a Future? - Unpublished paper [Civil
Society and International Development, Prof. Nidhi Srinivas] - Parsons
New School for Design, New York.
Douglass, Frederick. [1849] (1991) Letter to an abolitionist associate.
In Organizing For Social Change: A Mandate For Activity In The 1990s.
Edited by K. Bobo, J. Kendall, and S. Max. Washington, D.C.: Seven
Locks Press.
Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Habermas and Foucault: Thinkers for civil society?,
British Journal of Sociology , 49 (2), p. 210-233.
Harvey, D. Social Justice and the City (2nd Edition ed.). Athens, Georgia:
The University of Georgia Press.
Kaminer, T. & Robles-Duran M. & Sohn H. (Eds.) (2011). Urban
Asymetries. Studies and Projects on Neoliberal Urbanization.,
Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.
Munck, R. (Ed.) (2003). Reinventing the City? Liverpool in Comparative
Perspective., Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Olson, S. (1976), Baltimore., Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Pub Co.
East Baltimore Mirrored
Reflecting on design strategies.
56
The previous two chapters have lead to a thorough
understanding of the dynamics East Baltimore deals
with. From this analysis we can conclude that the current
dominance of Johns Hopkins has a major impact on
what happens or moreover does not happen in the
neighborhood. The fragmented NGO landscape,bending
under the pressure of Johns Hopkins impartial interests,
causes an ineffciency in tackling stringent urban and
social issues.
An array of socio-demographic and urban problematics
cause for the inhabitants of East Baltimore to feel
disempowered. Their disconnection from the areas main
investor, Johns Hopkins Hospital, has resulted in intense
urban assymetries. This is further encouraged by the
protective behaviour of the hospital facility. And last but
not least, the dysfunctional real estate market has caused
a discontinuation in investments in the area which has
further deteriorated its conditions.
To counteract these dynamics we had to decide on a
common strategy. This strategy fnds its foundation in the
real estate crisis that emerged from the housing bubble in
2008. This momentum has caused for all developmental
activities to be stopped and gives the opportunity to rethink
how this unbridled development has been achieved and
how we could be able to think of more inclusive strategies
in the future.
This strategy consists of repositioning Johns Hopkins
Hospital within its physical and organizational territory,
tapping into the local capacity of the residents,
reconfguring the NGO network in a more effcient way,
reimagining the urban fabric, and fnally include all
layers of civil engagement being political, ecological,
economical and social.
Before going further into the design we set some goals
which we intended to achieve through our physical
interventions. First and foremost we empower the East
Baltimore inhabitants to give them a signifcant weight to
balance out Johns Hopkins dominant character. Secondly
we try to unify the NGO landscape around common goals.
By tackling the omnipresence of the dense but vacant
urban fabric we intend to revive it with new activities and
by doing so we hope to re-activate the real estate market
by bringing profound changes to the character of new
developments.
This brings us to the last part, located in the next chapter,
where we discuss our individual strategies based on
these common grounds.
PROJECT 1:
Grids: of planning and planting
Esther Jacobs
PROJECT 2:
Engagement of people through water economies
Sven Augusteyns
PROJECT 3:
Learning [the] landscape
Stimulating East Baltimores resilience through education
Ben Diricxk
Baltimore Futures
Visions for Tomorrow
Reconfiguring the urban voids
Esther Jacobs
62
The previous chapters have constructed the framework
we will be working in. East Baltimore is one of the most
excluded neighborhoods in the city: excluded from jobs,
excluded from healthy food provision, excluded from
green areas, in some cases even excluded from society.
Its inhabitants seem to be literally and fguratively locked
in the almost 200 year old grid structure. Car ownership
is low, connections to public transport not effcient and
unemployment rates are high, so families do not have
money to escape. Geographically the grid is confned by
a railway in the north, the Pulaski highway in the south,
an industrial area in the east, and a constellation of urban
renewal projects and public housing islands in the west.
East Baltimore is truly the sum of all its parts. Connected
to one another by the over dimensioned grid structure.
(image 5)
East-Baltimore was chosen as a site because of the
remarkable contrast it holds within its boundaries. (image
1) it is part of Baltimores ring of blight, yet it also is
East Baltimore
of blight and growth.
the home of Johns Hopkins Hospital, the number one
teaching hospital in the US. With 12.000 employees that
travel from the Baltimore suburbs to work every day,
treating 80.000 patients a week. Johns Hopkins Hospital
was not always surrounded by a sea of rowhouses, it was
originally envisioned as a hospital on a hill in the outskirts
of the city, overlooking Baltimores agricultural felds.
(image 2) Its goal was to provide health care in a healthy
environment. Unfortunately, urban growth disturbed this
vision. The hospital today resembles a huge fortress,
seemingly protecting its residents and patients from the
outside world. (image 3)
A closer look at this ring of blight shows what this really
means for the neighborhood. With the vast amount of vacant
lots and abandoned buildings in the grid, the impact of
the shrinking phenomenon on the urban tissue becomes
clear. (image 4) This implies that certain infrastructures,
like roads, but also water supplies, sewage systems,...
are underused causing rising public expenditures in
the neighborhood. Looking at the catalogue of road
infrastructures present in East Baltimore we can see that
the main streets and avenues and Broadway are over
dimensioned and are potential spaces for change in the
neighborhood.
There are two opposite development forces at work in
East Baltimore today. On one hand, the shrinking sea
of rowhouses (image 8), on the other Johns Hopkins
Hospital that attracts new industries. The development
stop in 2008 gives us the opportunity to rethink these
development strategies and formulate a new vision for the
future of East Baltimore.
Ring of blight
Railroads
Points of growth
Planning districts
1. Ring of blight + sparks of growth
Johns Hopkins Hospital
1 5 km
2. Johns Hopkins Hospital 1852
Johns Hopkins Hospital Yesterday
3. Johns Hopkins Hospital 2011
Johns Hopkins Hospital Today
Vacant Lots
Lots with abandoned houses
4. Vacant lots and abandoned houses in rowhouse tissue (based on research Google Streetview, july 2011)
100 500m
Grid of rowhouses
Public housing projects
Industrial area
Railways + abandoned industries
5. East Baltimore = sum of all its parts
Cemeteries + vast green spaces
6. Underused road infrastructures
100 500m
Network of back alleys
Underused road infrastructure
7. Catalogue of road infrastructures
back alleys
one way streets
main avenues
Broadway
4m
6m
20m
35m
8. East Baltimore development forces: shrinking sea of rowhouses
East Baltimore Rowhouses Today
70
East Baltimore Tomorrow ?
71
0.5 1 km
9. East Baltimore development forces: expanding Johns Hopkins Hospital
Johns Hopkins Hospital Today
72
Johns Hopkins Hospital Tomorrow ?
73
0.5 1 km
74
Besides belonging to the planning district of East-
Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Hospital and the East Baltimore
row house tissue also belong to the Inner Harbor
Watershed. (image 13)
Even though there are parks and large green spaces in the
watershed (image 14), it is the watershed with the lowest
percentage of forest cover and the largest percentage of
impermeable surfaces. In case of rainfall, this means that
there are ample amount of trees to buffer water. As a result
streets and back alleys almost instantly turn into rivers
that divert the water and all the debris it encounters along
the way instantly into the storm water drainage system.
Because of the huge amounts of water fowing into this
system at once, sewage overfow occurs and pollutes the
water from the Chesapeake bay.(image 10,11,12)
Since the foundation of Baltimore, the Chesapeake bay
has been an important source of income and ecological
quality for the city which explains the numerous amounts
of NGOs and stakeholders that engage themselves to
restore the ecological value of the watershed, for example
Blue Water Baltimore, Forest for Watersheds, etc.
They have several programs that are interesting for
designers such as the Herrin Run Tree Nursery, the Blue
Alleys Program and the programs that educate the public
on the relationship between forests and watersheds.
As mentioned before, Johns Hopkins is located on one
of the highest points in the watershed. The shrinking
rowhouse tissue is located in the valley and thus water is
collected here.(image 15) One can start to imagine that
the urban voids have huge potential to be used as water
buffers for the Inner Harbor watershed.
10. back alleys turn into rivers
11. storm water drainage along
East Baltimore roads, marking the
relationship with the Chesapeake bay
12. trash and debris in the
Chesapeake bay
East Baltimore
ecologies.
13. East Baltimore in relation to the inner harbor watershed
75
14. Inner harbor watershed
76
15. Inner harbor watershed: topography
Landscape sections
Contour lines, every 10ft/3m
77
0.5 1 km
A question that one can ask is what does East-Baltimore
signify as a neighborhood? The answer will depend
on whom you pose the question. When we look at how
people from the rowhouse tissue move around the city and
how employees, students and patients of Johns Hopkins
Hospital use the same space, we can see that there are
little to no points of interchange between them.
The hospital today is built up as if it were a fortress.
Major roads direct people straight through the urban
jungle of East Baltimore. Upon arrival at the destination
underground passes and skywalks lead people directly
from their cars to the hospital without having to step into
the public raum or take part in community life. Cafeterias,
shops and restaurants are located in the inner core of the
building. This way local inhabitants are left out of public
life within the hospital.

On the other hand, we also saw that public space in East-
Baltimore is not experienced that way by its inhabitants
because of fears and uncertainties. The only real places
of interaction we can fnd in churches, schools, the
commercial strip of Monument street.
Because there are so little points of interchange between
all of these neighbors, they slowly but surely got estranged
from one another, which created a lack of trust between
parties.
If we want to make this neighborhood more inclusive,
an important aspect to work on is various interchanges
between human agents. Not only between Johns Hopkins
and the neighborhood, but also interchanges between
local inhabitants.
East Baltimore
human agents.
16. East Baltimore youngsters as portrayed by the Wire
17. Johns Hopkins staff
78
18. East Baltimore fluxes
Rowhouse grid
Schools, Community Centers, Churches,...
Monument Street
79
0.5 1 km
80
strategy
The former analysis focuses on two main urban fgures:
the rowhouse grid and the superblock of Johns Hopkins.
It shows that both entities have their own problems
resulting from this status of exclusion and this at an
urban, ecological and social level. How can urban design
reconnect both entities on each of these levels?
The proposed design wants to show that the potential
lies in the voids present in the urban tissue. The vast
amount of open areas (or soon to be open areas), form
a unique opportunity for a new, third fgure to get woven
into the tissue. A fgure that becomes a mediating force
between Johns Hopkins Hospital and the East Baltimore
neighborhood, a fgure that restores part of the ecological
qualities of the area, a fgure that generates points of
interchange between people from the neighborhood
and Johns Hopkins as well as between people from the
neighborhood itself. The third fgure will be a means to
make East Baltimores landscape accessible to all users.
Given the shrinking character of the neighborhood since
the 1970s, the time has come to rethink its urbanity and
take the opportunity to let qualitative green areas take
over the vacant lots again. Today about 10% of the lots
of East Baltimore are either vacant or abandoned, about
166 ha or 410 acres in total.
In recent years, there has been great interest in urban food
production in the western world. Urban agriculture and
locally grown food became hip and trendy. Proof of this is
the popularity of bio-food, the slow food movement and
the various farmers markets popping up in cities all over
the United States. The provided products are however
very exclusive and few can afford them.
When we analyze East Baltimore, we see that it has the
unique combination of a workforce, available land and
a clientele ready to pay good money for locally grown
food. This combination could turn urban agriculture into
an inclusive practice when the niche market of organic,
locally grown food is used, not primarily as a source of
food, but as a source of income for the East Baltimore
neighborhood.
In the US the average farmsize is 418 acres, 31% of
farms are between 100 to 499 acres.(US department of
agriculture, census 2007). In the west of the US, land was
divided by Thomas Jefferson (1785) into equal squares of
1 square mile each (640 acres). An example of the infll
of this grid shows eight small farms inhabiting this space
(image 19)
The strategy proposed for East Baltimore is to overlay
the grid with a new agricultural carpet. This carpet will
create a better living environment, a new economy for the
neighborhood, and a healthy park environment for Johns
Hopkins Hospital.(image 20)
The people working the agricultural felds should not be
seen as merely farmers, they are the producers of the new
cultural landscape. They are the producers of an inclusive
space where different people can meet.
81
19. Comparison of productive landscapes
Urban voids East Baltimore, +/- 410 acres
Jeffersonian grid, 1square mile, 640 acres
1 square mile of farmland in Indiana,
managed by 8 small farms
82
20. Agricultural park, multiple benefits
100 500m
East Baltimore Neighborhood
Inner Harbor watershed
revaluating the neighborhood by presence of park
new economy, connecting to new clientele and the city
new recreational areas
hospital located in a park environment
healthy food
connection to neighborhood
forestation and permeable surfaces go up
waterrunoff goes down
park functions as waterbuffer and watercleaner
83
84
Design Proposal
To turn urban agriculture into a new economy for East
Baltimore, three general zones need to be present in the
park.
The most extensive one is the zone for food production,
which consists mainly of agricultural felds and areas for
water supply. A second zone is the location of the urban
farms where processing of the crops takes place. Finally
there is a need for market spaces, the points where the
exchange between farmer and costumer takes place.
The production zone
Urban agriculture and different shapes and sizes of plots
The different conditions and constellations of vacant lots,
demand for different types of agriculture. The inner block
felds, with sizes of about 0,2 ha form the stage for small
scale, labor intensive agriculture such as gardens for
vegetables, small fruits, herbs or fowers.
The large amount of vacant lots north of Johns Hopkins
Hospital on the other hand will be the location for plantations
of fruit trees with recreational areas. Depending on the
public character of the surroundings, these plantations
are low density high stem fruit trees or high density low
stem fruit trees.
The mood and atmosphere of the different areas in the
park will be determined by the type of agriculture and
differ with the seasons. The agricultural carpet is an ever
changing landscape: daily, monthly and yearly.
Johns Hopkins is located on the crossing of these two
agricultural landscapes, the open spaces in between
blocks get interwoven in the new agricultural carpet.
85
Urban agriculture and water
A basic need for sustainable urban agriculture is the
presence of a water system. Both drainage and irrigation
of the felds is necessary. The proposed water structure
is based on the topography we can fnd in the area. The
biggest part of the agricultural carpet is located along the
railway line, in the valley between Johns Hopkins and the
northern part of the watershed. This provides the incentive
for rainwater to be collected along the railway line, to
insert systems along the railwayline for the cleaning of
the water and to provide irrigation channels for adjacant
felds. For farmers workig the agricultural gardens in the
inner blocks, irrigation pools are planned out of which
they can tap water.
One system of waterpurifcation is the planting of large
poplar trees along the railwayline. These trees will at the
same time enhance this line in the landscape and provide
a sound buffer from the noise of the railway for the rest of
the park. In places where the soil is dry form the perfect
meadows for the herding of cattle.
The processing zone
East Baltimores old abandoned factories are all located
around the railway line. These unused factories will be
used for the processing of food and thus will get a new
future as urban farms. Today the HEBCAC already has
a community kitchen in one of these buildings and is
planning to transform two of these buildings for activities
of urban agriculture. One will become a commisionary
that will provide the food for the public school system in
the city of Baltimore, the other will become a center for
urban agriculture.

Market spaces
Provision of food will happen in newly installed markets
and revived supermarkets in the neighborhood, such
as Pride. Markets are places where people from various
backgrounds and social classes can meet, they have a
very low treshold and are comfortable public spaces for
everyone.
The new market is organized on the rooftop of one of the
Johns Hopkins Parking buildings. A strategic location with
nice views over the entire agricultural carpet. Following
the principle: see what you buy, buy what you see.
21. Grids: of planning and planting
Vegetable, Fruit, Flowers
Existing Parks
Poplar tree farm
Green street infrastructures
Water harvesting railroad
Schools
Market M
Production centers
Walking distance entrance Johns Hopkins Hospital into the park 5,10,15 min.
86
87
22. Orchards, indication of seasonal atmospheres
88
23. Poplar tree farm
89
90
Stakeholders
To conclude one needs to ask how this new park will
be funded before it can become self-sustaining. Given
the multiple layers of the park and different spheres of
infuence, a number of stakeholders can be addressed to
realize this new vision for tomorrow.
The drawing of the district boundaries of East Baltimore
and the Inner Harbor Watershed in maps was done
intentionally because these are often limits in which
stakeholders think and work.
The image to the right shows a selection of the main
stakeholders that can be brought together in the project.
Obviously Johns Hopkins Hospital is one of the main
players in the development of a new hospital park.
Human capital for the creation and maintenance of the
park will mainly be retrieved from people in the direct
neighborhood.
The fgure shows a small selection of other stakeholders
that might be interested in the project, for example
schools in the East-Baltimore neighborhood and Inner
Harbor Watershed.
Often these stakeholders already have similar projects in
their portfolio, for example: the HEBCAC and its interest in
urban food production and the conversion of old industrial
sites. Forest for Watersheds who advocate the planting of
more trees in the watershed while also trying to reconnect
neighborhoods with their waters. Blue Water Baltimore
with programs to transform the alley structure of Baltimore
into ecologically friendly passages.
24. Agricultural Carpet Stakeholders
References
Christiaanse, K. & Rieniest, T. & Sigler, J. (Eds.) (2009), Open City:
Designing Coexistence., Amsterdam: SUN.
Gandelsonas, M. (1999). X-Urbanism: Architecture and the American
City., New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Doherty, G. & Mostafavi, M. (Eds.) (2010), Ecological Urbanism., Baden,
Switzerland: Lars Mller Publishers and the President and Fellows of
Harvard College.
Przybylski, M. & White, M. (Eds.) (2010), Bracket On Farming.,
Barcelona: Actar.
McHarg, I.L. (1992), Design with Nature. 25th anniversary edition., New
York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Costedoat, D., Desvigne, M. (Eds.) (2009), Intermediate Natures. The
landscapes of Michel Desvigne. Basil, Boston, Berlin: Birkhuser Verlag
AG.
Waldheim, C. (Ed.) (2006), The Landscape Urbanism Reader, New York:
Princeton Architectural Press.
www (last consulted august 2011)
http://www.bluewaterbaltimore.org/
http://www.cwp.org/
http://www.forestsforwatersheds.org/
Images
All images are produced by author accept:
[2] http://archive.mdhs.org/Library/Images/Mellon%20
Images/Z24access/z24-02061.jpg
[3] h t t p: / / me di a . k i c k s t a t i c . c o m/ k i c k a pps /
images/63256/photos/PHOTO_10140691_63256_24706410_ap.jpg
[7] Google Streetview
[12] ttp://farm1.stati c.fl i ckr.com/110/290886808_
ee55c222d6.jpg
[16] ht t p: / / www. ci t y- anal ysi s. net / wp- cont ent /
uploads/2011/02/the_wire_5.jpg
[17] http://apps.pathology.jhu.edu/blogs/pathology/wp-
content/uploads/2011/07/residents11x1024.jpg
[19] ht t p: / / 2. bp. bl ogspot . com/ _1FYt - nmGj mU/
TIUDfO8qXrI/AAAAAAAAAhY/6sV2mN_7gLo/s1600/Iowa.jpg
91
Engagement of people through water economies
Sven Augusteyns
94
Redrawing the Shrinking City
By dedensification and Inclusive Exchange Platforms
The housing market and the socio-economic status of the
East Baltimoreans came under pressure with the decline
of the manufacturing industry and the loss of low-skilled
jobs. Many of the East Baltimoreans could not afford living
in the working-class housing built at the turn of the century
and had to leave their neighborhood in search of better job
opportunities. Who did not have the possibility to leave,
was left unemployed in a declining neighborhood. The
abandonment struck the once thriving urban community.
A city that is deprived of its urban tissue by ghost blocks
and in which the inhabitants live in poverty is constantly
in search of reviving its real estate market and ways to
include the others in its economic structure. Unfortunately,
urban illnesses, such as crime and drug traffcking, are
masking the causes of the problem and make it diffcult
to reverse the shrinking city syndrome. However, the city
of Baltimore came up with the Land Bank, an organization
that acquires vacant housing units and lots to bring them
back on the market. This piecemeal tactic gives city
planners the ability to guide the revitalization process.
However, reality shows us that these lots are mostly sold
to real estate agents who in their turn do not invest in the
properties, to get a hold on the housing prices. Eventually,
the urban decay continues.
Because there is a growing potential to use these liberated
plots for revitalization strategies, Pride, a water service
organization, set up for the purpose of this thesis, will
work together with the Land Bank. They will install a social
and inclusive real estate market, parallel to the regular
real estate maket, that provides land to NGOs, churches
and inhabitants in order to implement economic water
programs that can revive the area block by block. The
underused lots and houses in East Baltimore acquired
by the Land Bank will be introduced on this social
land market and united in different Inclusive Exchange
Platforms. These platforms are created by dedensifcation
(demolishment) of the vacant houses in each block and
the reuse of underused roads, parking lots and bare
land. In each block only one row of inner block housing
will be demolished. These houses are mostly located on
dead end streets. Moreover, they are smaller and do not
signifcantly change the appearance of the housing block.
The Inclusive Exchange Platforms will be completed with
economic practices that are powered by water. Water, that
is harvested in each block by the residents or so-called
rainwater harvesters. It gives them the opportunity to be a
benefactor of the proft of the water practices.
The goal is to increase the socio-economic status of the
inhabitants by installing a rainwater landscape in East
Baltimore, while stimulating the private real estate market,
turning a shrinking neighborhood into a growing one.
1960
2
8
.
0
0
0
0
v
a
c
a
n
c
i
e
s
1960 2011 2060
Baltimore
HOUSING
Dedensification
Installing water services
Prides stimulates the creation
of Inclusive Exchange platforms
on the vacant lots of the Landbank.
By means of Water Practices,
service jobs will be created.
The Citys Landbank
acquires as much
vacant housing and lots
as possible. The lots will
be offered on the social
real estate market.
A
b
o
n
d
o
n
n
e
m
e
n
t
D
e
d
e
n
s
ific
a
tio
n
S
e
r
v
ic
e
J
o
b
s
L
o
w
s
k
ill J
o
b
s
Improving the
socio-economic
status of the East Baltimore
inhabitant
Reviving the Real Estate
Market
Maintaining actively the
watershed
GOAL
1. (right) shrinking city syndrome vs potentials
1960
2
8
.
0
0
0
0
v
a
c
a
n
c
i
e
s
1960 2011 2060
Baltimore
HOUSING
Dedensification
Installing water services
Prides stimulates the creation
of Inclusive Exchange platforms
on the vacant lots of the Landbank.
By means of Water Practices,
service jobs will be created.
The Citys Landbank
acquires as much
vacant housing and lots
as possible. The lots will
be offered on the social
real estate market.
A
b
o
n
d
o
n
n
e
m
e
n
t
D
e
d
e
n
s
ific
a
tio
n
S
e
r
v
ic
e
J
o
b
s
L
o
w
s
k
ill J
o
b
s
Improving the
socio-economic
status of the East Baltimore
inhabitant
Reviving the Real Estate
Market
Maintaining actively the
watershed
GOAL
1. (right) shrinking city syndrome vs potentials
Abandoned housing Dead End Streets, aligned with highest amount of vacancies
N
0m 250m
50m
2. Location of abandonment in East Baltimore
1.Healthy Block
2. Inner block housing are dissa-
pearing: Lowest income groups
living in the smaller inner block
houses leave due to job loss.
3. Cornershops are moving out
the neighborhood, the outer block
houses are abandonned.
4. Full extend of crisis:
The whole block is neglected from 70s till
present day.
5. The Land Bank aqcuires vacant
lots and demolishes the inner
block housing.
6. Outer block houses that are in
bad condition are demolished.
Present Condition:
Deteriorated inner block
Future Condition:
The Land Bank demolishes one
row of houses in the inner block.
Pride foresees an Inclusive
Exchange Platform.
3. Block decline and dedensification strategy
97
4. Suboptimal use of infrastructure
Abandonned housing Parkings Grass Underused Roads
N
0m
250m
100m
Abandonned housing Parkings Grass Land for Inclusive Exchange Platforms
5. Land provided to the social real estate market
N
0m
250m
100m
100
Unveiling Water Economies
Tapping into local capacity
A major player in East Baltimore is the Johns Hopkins
Hospital. Each day, a workforce of 14.000 men and
women drives through the deprived blocks of East
Baltimore to the parking lots of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Doctors, nurses, visitors and patients lack the benefts of
a thriving urban environment in the vicinity of the hospital
where they can buy food, do their laundry, have a beer,
go for a stroll, have their car washed, This vacuum is a
major opportunity. A water fueled service economy can
be installed to employ East Baltimoreans and make the
area more attractive to investors. By creating contact
points between the employees of Johns Hopkins Hospital
and the inhabitants of East Baltimore, socio-economic
water fueled programs can be set up on land of the social
real estate market.
To have an impact on the scale of the urban decay, an
extensive rainwater harvesting system, that will feed the
water services, is laid out. A revenue generating rainwater
harvesting system will stimulate all inhabitants of the block
to collect rainwater by means of their roof. Afterwards the
water is stored in a cistern in the inner block where, in
its turn, the water service can tap into the excess of free
rainwater. The water can be used to wash cars or clothes,
fush toilets, irrigate switchgrass felds and urban nut
tree farms or for recreational services. The proft that is
created by the water service will partially be redistributed
to the water harvesters. The management of the practice
will be in the hands of local NGOs, such as churches and
community associations, which are active in the block
and the sub watershed. The redistribution of the proft is
executed by Pride, who will use a part of the money to
invest in rainwater harvesting equipment and workshops.
The goals of this process are diverse.
The watershed of East Baltimore is actively maintained,
fast runoff of rainwater and the transport of pollutants is
reduced. The inhabitant gets the opportunity to fnd a low-
skilled job in his or her neighborhood and makes extra
money by harvesting water. This eventually, will improve
his or her economic status. But also socially, inhabitants
and the workforce of Johns Hopkins get into contact with
each other. The fractured NGO landscape works together
on a joint strategy: namely, a block by block redevelopment
structured by the watershed. By negotiation between the
NGOs at the location of the Pride market, a complementary
water landscape can be unfolded.
This will hopefully stimulate, in a bottom-up manner, the
urban regeneration of East Baltimore. Johns Hopkins
Hospital can proft of the renaissance of the real estate
market and the new services provided to its employees
and visitors.
WATER
LAND
BANK
1. Dedensification
INHABITANT
Waterharvester &
user
JOHNS HOPKINS
HOSPITAL
JOHNS HOPKINS
EMPLOYEE
New Lots to Social Real Estate market
Inclusive Exchange
Platform
Water based services
NGO
2. Installing
User of
water service
hello!
Water based service
Commuters
of JH Hospital
Income
Manages the
water service
= $$
$
$
Redistribution
of revenue to
waterharvesters
Pride provides
water workshops,
employees &
information
to NGOs
Pride searches
Employees for
the services
Reviving
urban area
JH
enhancing
socio
economic
status
Impulsing
real estate
market
Relinking
NGOs by
watershed
Creating
exchange
points
Improving
watershed
quality
Goals
6. Stakeholder Chart
101
MOM
Needs prepared
food for her and
her children
NEURO-
CHIRURG
Has to
dryclean
his suits
STUDENT
Wants to have
a beer after
his long day
at the hospital
SPECIALIST
Has to clean
his car, but
doesnt
have time
UNEMPLOYED/
COOK
His mother
learned him
to cook
well
UNEMPLOYED/
CARWASH
His uncle
owns the
smallest
car wash
of East-
Baltimore
UNEMPLOYED/
LAUNDRY
MANAGER
His new son
needs a father
with a job
GRADUATED
Wants to learn
new skills
Vallet
Carwash
Kitchen
Take-away
Laundry
Service
Micro-
Brewery
East-Baltimoreans
Johns Hopkins Employees
JUST OUT OF
PRISON
...
SECRETARY
Maura needs to
fnd a daycare
for her child
7. Potentials of water related services between Johns Hopkins employees and East Baltimoreans
102
8. Urban Fabric Linked to Water Practices.
PARKING CARWASH
STUDENT
HOUSING
LAUNDRO
MAT CAFE
ROWHOUSES
RAINWATER
SWITCHGRASS
ROWHOUSES
RAINWATER
RECREATION
103
WATER MARKET
HEBCAC
THE NEW MARKET FOR
WATER, JOBS AND
LAND
GET INSIDE!
100 WATER JOBS!
YOU
S
c
h
o
o
l
s
Policy
Makers
UNITING NGOS IN A
JOINT ECONOMIC
WATER LANDSCAPE
VALORIZING EXISTING
PROGRAMS AND NET-
WORKS IN BALTIMORE
WHO IS
WELCOME?
E
A
R
N
M
O
N
E
Y

W
IT
H
Y
O
U
R
R
O
O
F
!
INHABITANTS
B
E
C
O
M
E
A
C
A
R
W
A
S
H
E
R
PROVIDING WATER
RELATED JOBS TO
EAST BALTIMOREANS
ORGANIZING
THE SOCIAL REAL
ESTATE MARKET
PRIDE IS A NEUTRAL
UMBRELLA
ORGANIZATION UNITING
NGOS CONCERNED
WITH THE USE OF
INCLUSIVE WATER
PRACTICES
$
=
105
9. (left) Pride Water Market
10. The benefits of rainwater harvesting
WATER MARKET
HEBCAC
THE NEW MARKET FOR
WATER, JOBS AND
LAND
GET INSIDE!
100 WATER JOBS!
YOU
S
c
h
o
o
l
s
Policy
Makers
UNITING NGOS IN A
JOINT ECONOMIC
WATER LANDSCAPE
VALORIZING EXISTING
PROGRAMS AND NET-
WORKS IN BALTIMORE
WHO IS
WELCOME?
E
A
R
N
M
O
N
E
Y

W
IT
H
Y
O
U
R
R
O
O
F
!
INHABITANTS
B
E
C
O
M
E
A
C
A
R
W
A
S
H
E
R
PROVIDING WATER
RELATED JOBS TO
EAST BALTIMOREANS
ORGANIZING
THE SOCIAL REAL
ESTATE MARKET
PRIDE IS A NEUTRAL
UMBRELLA
ORGANIZATION UNITING
NGOS CONCERNED
WITH THE USE OF
INCLUSIVE WATER
PRACTICES
$
=
106
Weaving Water in the Urban Landscape
Introducing water practices on Inclusive Exchange platforms
The location of the water practices are strongly determined
by the nature of the NGOs, active in the sub watershed,
the vicinity of heavily or underused roads, topography,
existing green structures and the amount of water that
can be harvested within each shed.
Therefore, the water harvesting landscape unfolds itself
taking into consideration different conditions. Starting with
the water harvesters who collect water on the roofs of their
houses. A team of Pride has to convince individuals to
install a rainwater harvesting system. Without cooperation
there will be no large-scale water collection and no block
revitalization. In the next phase, the rainwater has to be
stored, block by block after which it has to be made ready
for use. This comprises natural or chemical cleaning.
This system can be found in the inner block, where it can
be mixed with recreational facilities. An open or closed
water canal connects all the cisterns in the sub watershed
and leads to the water services. The sub watershed is
the sequential collection of housing blocks that are
linked to each other following the trajectory of the water
on the topography. All the canals of the sub watershed
are connected to the Water Street that serves as the fnal
cistern. This pedestrianized armature is situated at the
lowest point and houses most of the water services. It is
an important infrastructure that is located parallel to the
railroad and crosses with one the most traffcked roads in
the area leading to Johns Hopkins Hospital. Three major
NGOs are active on the crossing of these infrastructures
and Water Street:
- The Water Square, which bundles car wash and laundry
facilities with a microbrewery and a caf.
- Pride, which revives the partially demolished uphill blocks
with urban food farms and manages the switchgrass
production.
- And HEBCAC, an organization that creates socio-
economic programs such as a food kitchen with shop,
linked to local food farms.
The strategic location of these services, on a busy
intersection and the lowest point of the subsheds,
maximizes the amount of economic exchanges and the
amount of rain water that can be used.

An extra surplus for the redevelopment of East Baltimore
is an energy landscape that is linked to the trajectory
of the railway and has branches into the
neighborhood. This landscape will produce
switchgrass which will be changed into bio-
ethanol. The revenue of the bio-ethanol and
the energy generated by wind mills makes the
area more energy independent and creates
an extra tax income for its inhabitants and
extra money for the maintenance of Inclusive
Exchange Platforms.
The green structure will also create a link
between two parks at the border of East
Baltimore by weaving in a system of trees and
bike and pedestrian networks. This allows for a
better accessibility of the railroad area, which
is now the backside of the neighborhood.
The energy strip will, in comparison to the
Water Street, be an open natural structure
instead of an urban strip.
Two open irrigation canals at each side of
the railroad will collect as much rainwater as
possible. In times of drought the cisterns of
Water Street will fll these irrigation canals.
The storage of rainwater along with the careful
economical use of the rainwater are of major
importance to the success of the East Baltimore
Economic Water Landscape.
11. Structures of the economic waterscape
107
100m
250m
0m
N
Parking Most Traffcked roads
12. Most trafficked roads in East Baltimore
Sub watershed connector Water Street Watershed managers: NGO, churches, Johns Hopkins Hospital,...
N
13. Water structure
Irrigation Canal
Platforms of Exchange Subwatershed manager Sub watershed boundary
100m
250m
0m
N
14. NGOs and practices active in each sub watershed
Watershed edge
Platforms of Exchange
15. Armatures
Platforms of Exchange Water Street and sub shedcanals, cisterns Energy strip Exchange Road
200m
500m
0
N
Parks
112
16. Section Aa
Exchanging Harvested Water
Clustering water practices at the Water Square
The Water Square is the gate to East Baltimores water
practices. The entry to Water Street unites several water
venues such as a Car Wash, Laundromatcaf, a Micro
Brewery and a Local Meal shop.
The main economic focus is situated at the edge of the
square, underneath the canopy at the street side. One
lane of the frequently used North Washington Street,
leading from Johns Hopkins Hospital to the Northern
suburbs, is changed into a blue painted drive-in car
wash. A workforce of car washers cleans the car while the
driver catches its laundry or buys a hot meal at the water
square.
The water for the car wash is stored underneath the drive-
in and is collected from the roofs, the parking garage on
top of the watershed and the canopy. The rain water is
pumped up at several waterspots to refll the car wash
mobiles with cleaning water. After washing, the soaped
water is absorbed by a vegetated trench and settles down
in the tank. The overfow infltrates in the soil.
The Water Square is characterized by its elevated
platform that accommodates rain water tanks. It is paved
with cobblestone and bundles soft transport modes, like
a bike path that leads from East Baltimore to Penn Station.
Due to the 1 meter high platform, traffc slows down at
the crossing with N.Washington Street. This elevation
works as a speed bump, and clearly marks the bus stop
underneath the canopy.
The inside of the uphill blocks in the sub watershed are
completed with a rainwater harvesting system.
A system of pipes leads the water from the roofs to a
looped canal that is connected to the central cistern. Due
to topographic changes, one side of the cistern stands
out and serves as a basketball feld and a nut tree farm.
Another block is developed as an urban food farm.
Both blocks are connected to each other by a subterranean
sub shed canal.
113
17. Zoom on Water Squares subshed
A
a
114
18. View on the canopy, marking the beginning of Water Street, covering the car wash and buslane.
19. Jessy, a car wash employee just washed the car of Marlene, a nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Marlene bought in the mean time a local fresh
meal and got her laundry which she dropped this morning at the laundromat caf.
Vegetated Filter
Purifies and
evacuates
car wash runoff
Water pump
Tap to recharge the
car wash carts
Cistern
Collects purified
rain water for
the car wash service
115
20. The inner courtyard of the housing block is transformed into a basketball field and rainwater cistern.
21. The Water Squares elevated soft transport platform with cistern, paved with cobblestone and alligned by service roads for the water practices.
Vegetated Trench
Cleans, slows and
absorbs street runoff
Gravel Cistern
Purifies & stores
rainwater
Loop canal
Collects the rain
water from roofs
Water pipe
Transports the
rainwater to water
fueled serivces
Stormwater Quality
Filter
with oil seperator, cleans
street runoff
Gravel Cistern
Collects, as lowest cistern, the rainwa-
ter which is harvested in the uphill sub
watersheds. Afterwards, the water will
be distributed to the water practices
on the Water Square
116
Uniting East Baltimores watersheds
Reviving Pride: The Water Market
The square in front of Pride Water Market is divided
by the border of two watersheds. Hereby it lays
on one of the highest points in east-west direction
and on the lowest point in north-south direction,
simultaneously evacuating and collecting water. This
condition is symbolically important as Pride tries to
unite all NGOs and inhabitants in East Baltimore into
a joint water system.
The square in front of the building , which lays on the
highest point, absorbs and evacuates rain water by
means of two different urban layouts. The left water
shed is covered with grind and pinched with small
hills that grow urban trees which will provide for extra
tree canopy to the streetscape. In this area, the rain
water infltrates into the soil or it runs immediately into
the open sub shed canal. The right water shed of
the square is covered with a mix of cobblestone and
grass to allow water recreation, events or parking
space. The open sub shed canals at both ends of the
square evacuate the water to the lowest point, at the
side of Pride facing the railroad. Inhere, an irrigation
canal for the production of switchgrass is located.
22. Birds Eye view Pride
A
a
117
23. Left watershed
24. Section Aa
25. Right watershed
Open Sub Shed
Canal
drains water to the irriga-
tion canal at the railroad
Closed Sub Shed-
Canal
Nut trees
Wind Mills
Shade trees
Nut trees
26. Bird Eye view on Energy Strip
a
Harvesting the Energy Landscape
Reviving the railway corridor
The railroad was once the main economic strip of East
Baltimore, booming due to dozens of manufacturing plants,
but has now become the back street of the area. Turning
the decay can be done by restructuring the vacant lots and
reusing the factories. A biomass landscape is introduced
by stitching suffciently large lots into a patchwork that
will reallocate them to grow switchgrass. Switchgrass is
an indigenous species used for energy production. It is
well suited for phytoremediation of heavily polluted soils
such as the ones in East Baltimore. Switchgrass grows
from spring till mid-summer and will be irrigated by rain
water, provided by water harvesters of the different sub
watersheds. The hay that is harvested will be stored
and processed to energy pallets in the newly opened
factories, providing local jobs, or it will be transported to a
bio-ethanol plant. Water harvesters can count on a part of
the proft of the practice that will be redistributed by Pride.
The railroad armature will also be used to start planting
two kinds of trees into the blocks and streets of East
Baltimore. Namely, canopy trees in the streetscape, which
absorb rain water and provide shade and nut tree farms
that will take over bare soil in the inside of housing blocks.
The nut tree will be nurtured in each block. Later on it will
be planted on the remediated soil of Water Street.
118
26. Bird Eye view on Energy Strip
Watershed edge Bike Path sub watershed
connector
Railway Irrigation
Canal
Switch grass
Urban Food
Farm
Processing
Unit for Nuts
A
119
120
27. Section Aa over the Energy Landscape
28. Switchgrass Production Cycle
Phyto-
remediation
3-5
years
Energy Crop
Provides
extra energy
independance
to East Baltimore.
Switchgrass Productive
Landscape
Windmills
Pallets
Urban Nut
Tree farms
Irrigation
Canal
Located on the lowest
point in the watershed
Provides rainwater
for irrigation.
2meter
2,5meter
Indigenous crop
used for:
Planting
On marginal,
polluted soil
next to the
railroad
Growing
Spring
Harvesting
Manual system or
with an automatic
harvester
Energy
Production

Mid-Summer A part of the hay is
processed into energy
pallets.The other part is
stored and transported
to a Bio-Ethanol plant.
Nut trees,
nurtured in
innerhousing
blocks.
Selling
$$
Redistribution
TAX
invested in
Inclusive Exchange
platforms
Water
harvester
Return on
water harvested
Harvests roofwater
$
$
The soil will
be prepared for
future use while
installing a switch-
grass landscape
Switchgrass Production Cycle
Bio-
Ethanol
Full grown trees
are planted on
the street.
Processing nuts
in an East Baltimore
factory.
Providing locally
grown food.
Irrigation Canal
used for the irrigation
of Switchgrass
and nut tree produc-
tion.
Open Irrigation Canal
121
Phyto-
remediation
3-5
years
Energy Crop
Provides
extra energy
independance
to East Baltimore.
Switchgrass Productive
Landscape
Windmills
Pallets
Urban Nut
Tree farms
Irrigation
Canal
Located on the lowest
point in the watershed
Provides rainwater
for irrigation.
2meter
2,5meter
Indigenous crop
used for:
Planting
On marginal,
polluted soil
next to the
railroad
Growing
Spring
Harvesting
Manual system or
with an automatic
harvester
Energy
Production

Mid-Summer A part of the hay is
processed into energy
pallets.The other part is
stored and transported
to a Bio-Ethanol plant.
Nut trees,
nurtured in
innerhousing
blocks.
Selling
$$
Redistribution
TAX
invested in
Inclusive Exchange
platforms
Water
harvester
Return on
water harvested
Harvests roofwater
$
$
The soil will
be prepared for
future use while
installing a switch-
grass landscape
Switchgrass Production Cycle
Bio-
Ethanol
Full grown trees
are planted on
the street.
Processing nuts
in an East Baltimore
factory.
Providing locally
grown food.
29. Urban Nut Tree Farm
122
The perception of the others in the poor areas of East
Baltimore is far-reaching. The process that creates the
others can be explained by the theory of Henri Lefebvre
who describes that space is commanded by a hegemonic
class as a tool to reproduce its dominance. (Lefebvre,
1991) This process driven by dominance and protection
of space formed the notion of East Baltimore: Land of the
Others. It is historically maintained and as well in present
time by the frame through which power structures in
Baltimore look towards this area of the city. The proof
of this frame can be seen in a multiplicity of maps and
development plans. One of the most clear examples is
the redlining map made in the 1950s which excluded
African Americans from buying property in wealthier,
white, neighborhoods and prevented them to get loans
to invest in their own areas of living. Equally important is
the typology map, which was recently updated and warns
developers not to invest in distressed housing zones. The
omnipresence of repressive blue lights created to diminish
drug traffcking, stigmatizes a big area of the city. A more
latent, but important exclusionary zoning practice is the
school district map, who has not been published but can
be consulted by telephone. It informs families looking for
a house to what school their child has to go. It creates a
lack of investment in housing in certain areas in the city
as some of the schools are part of a census area with a
low tax base, which is important for the funding and the
quality of the schools.
All these zoning practices enforce the notion of East
Baltimore being underdeveloped. The notion of the
underdeveloped, frstly coined by President Truman in
1949 in his inauguration speech, creates a new perception
of ones own developed self, and of the other. Since then
development has connoted at least one thing: to escape
from the undignifed condition called underdevelopment.
(Esteva, 1992) As Esteva refers to in his essay on
Development, (development) has been linked to a
merely economic development, where the economic man
is created. A man that, like in East Baltimore, is being
housed at the turn of the century by the biggest industrial
employers in a low income working-class neighborhood
and who has lost his job after the economic restructuring
in the 7Os.
The crisis that hits East Baltimore has created a new
common. A common that is a reaction to the so-called
economic man whose past collection of commons,
communities and habits was destroyed by industrial and
In search of a defenition
Urbanisms of Inclusion: Notion of the Others
123
economic processes. The common man who wants to
liberate himself from the economic chains.(Estava,1992)
This has created informally based social and economic
practices in Baltimore, such as pop-up car washes,
informal gardening and construction work, drug traffcking
and a network of religious and non-proft organizations.
For people on the margins disengaging from the
economic logic of the market or the plan has become the
very condition of survival.(Estava, 1992) They are living in
a scarcity of jobs, housing and food, and try to cope with
the damage that has been done by the temporary inability
to escape from the damaging economic interactions they
still have to maintain.
The effect of being the other has an immediate impact on
the possibilities of progress in East Baltimore. Progress that
could be allowed by freeing space for the new commons,
like Inclusive Exchange Platforms, allowing local capacity
to grow. Instead, development, is superimposed by the joint
development practices of big institutions, such as Johns
Hopkins Hospital and the East Baltimore Development
Organization, (EBDI) that wants to safeguarde its position
by using a top-down development strategy in the
neighboring distressed areas. The production of space
to protect and stimulate the position of Johns Hopkins
Hospital to be a leading university and hospital in the
USA has created a development practice in which all
the abandoned housing in the vicinity are demolished
and will be replaced by a biotech campus and middle
income housing. This oppressing urban development
practice could fnd its way due to the constant neglect
of the housing stock and inhabitants interest, stimulated
by exclusive zoning plans and supraregional infuences.
Such as the housing crises, the shift in the economy in the
70s, and a lack of investments in the area for 30 years,
which stands in contrast with the massive investments
made in the inner harbor area of Baltimore.
The manner in which the EBDI unfolds its top-down
development practices is subtle. To temper their critics
they insist on participatory development. A strategy
suggested by Jimoh Omo-Fadka and cited by Esteva in
the essay on Development, based on the failure of top-
down development. (Esteva, 1992) But in the case of the
EBDI, it converts participation into a manipulative trick to
involve people in its struggle for getting what it wants to
impose on them.
The superimposition of space to defne the future path of
East Baltimore is in contrast with the process that creates
activity in the city, namely the new common.
David Harvey, cited by James Corner in Terra Fluxus,
wrote that both new urbanism and modernist urban
planning fails because of their presumption that spatial
124
order can control history and process. Harvey argues
that the struggle for designers and planners lies not with
the spatial form and aesthetic appearances alone but
with the advancement of more socially just, politically
emancipatory, and ecologically sane mixes of socio-
temporal production processes. (James Corner,2008)
In this regard I recognize the comment of Graham Shane
on the jury in New York on Urbanisms of Inclusion that
deals with East Baltimore, to fnd that one minute positive
social practice that can allow East Baltimore to change
within a socio-temporal production process that already
exists. Rather than the imposition of capital and political
power such as the developments of the EBDI in East
Baltimore.
Designing with time rather than space defnes a totally
different perception of East Baltimore. The act of seeing,
the cultural and temporal appropriation of space, allows
designers to perceive the otherness as an emerging
feld of intervention. Designing perFORM rather than form
allows us to accentuate social, economic and ecological
practices and address their interlinked problems.
With this preface, we can begin to imagine how the
concept of Urbanisms of Inclusion suggests a more
promising, more human-centered and more empowering
form of practice.
It suggests the shifting away from the object qualities
of space to the systems that condition the distribution
and density of urban form, namely the inhabitants itself.
(James Corner, 2006)
The empowering of the others in a politically-economically
generated space, forces us to draw the underperceived.
Such as the informal economic practices, like a car wash
or networks of NGOs, the abandonments in the area but
also watersheds, topography, educational systems and
traffc fows. The unveiling of the landscape is recognizable
in landscape urbanism. Landscape Urbanism, as been
coined by Charles Waldheim, describes a disciplinary
realignment currently underway, in which landscape
replaces architecture as the basic building block of
contemporary urbanism. For many, across a range
of disciplines, landscape has become both the lens
through which the contemporary city is represented and
the medium through which it is constructed. (Charles
Waldheim, 2006)
Urbanisms of Inclusions adds an extra reality on the
landscape representated in landscape Urbanism, namely
the representation of the others.
125
Space, and more importantly the representation of the
use of the landscape over time, becomes increasingly
important. It is a very important tool to convince
stakeholders and the public who inhabits the landscape
into a development program. It also shows a more realistic
and fne-grained reality. This new visualization method,
which is a combination of interviews, renders, sections
and maps who represent the underperceived, replaces
the (zoning) map .
This manner of representation empowers the others
and include them into the development debate of the
neighborhood.
Urbanisms of Inclusion is driven by the complex social
inhabitation and use of the landscape, representing the
other man differently as in landscape urbanism and
hopefully socially more correct. Therefore Urbanisms of
inclusion uses a hybrid set of design and representation
tools used in landscape urbanism, collaborative
development and everyday urbanisms.
References
Henri Lefebvre,The Production of Space, (Blackwell,
1991)
Gustavo Esteva, Development, in The Development
Dictionary: A guide to knowledge as power, ed. Wolfgang
Sachs (ZED Books, 1992)
James Corner, Terra Fluxus, in The landscape Urbanism
Reader ,ed. Charles Waldheim (Princeton Architectural
press, 2006)
Charles Waldheim, Preface in The landscape Urbanism
Reader, ( Princeton Architectural press, 2006)
Graham Shane, The Emergence of Landscape
Urbanism, in The landscape Urbanism Reader, ed.
Charles Waldheim( Princeton Architectural press, 2006)
Images
All the images are produced by author.
126
Learning [the] landscape
Stimulating East Baltimores resilience through education
Ben Dirickx
127
128
Researching the case of Baltimore gave us thorough
insight in the issues this city deals with. But beyond
that it gave us insight in which dynamics are currently
defning processes of progress and decline in the United
States as a whole. By continuing reading on the current
situation in the United States, I could determine that in
many discussions education was pointed out as one of
the major controversial themes in the country.
In the United States, and many other countries for
that matter, education suffers from many societal
complications. High dropout rates are among the main
problems in the American educational system. And I found
out that the costs to society related to these dropout rates
are staggering. These costs are calculated in lost wages,
taxable incomes, healthcare, welfare and incarceration
and they would account for a loss of $319 billion a year in
the United States. A great paradox can be discovered in
combining these astronomic numbers with the neo-liberal
policies dominating our society and in constant search of
fnding the economically most effcient ways. If economy
is so important, then how can we allow such great losses?
But we should not get lost again in numbers and
economics and look more closely at the enormous loss of
human potential that is caused by the lack of capacity of
education to provide an interesting foundation for many of
their students and to counterbalance societal inequalities.
One could say that besides the crisis of natural resources
the United States faces a nationwide crisis of human
resources. This trend came about because of the
absence of the knowledge about the manner in which
human subjects take part in creating the city, in which
Education
as an entry point towards an Urbanism of Inclusion
129
human agency affects the urban environment and shapes
its outcome. The absence of human agency, whether
the result of pessimism regarding the human subjects
prowess or of an acceptance of market dictates, is
arguably one of the most troubling outcomes of that kind
of approach.
In the absence of history and the human subject, the
environment is naturalized, and the specifc struggles,
social movements, economic changes or political
decisions which construct the city become invisible
[Kaminer, 2011]
The amazing thing about human resources is that they are
a renewable source, embedded in every new generation.
The responsibility for the reclamation of this source is a
diffcult task taken on by the educational system. In areas
like East-Baltimore this task is all the more diffcult because
of the complicated societal challenges this neighborhood
and its inhabitants deal with. But it is also all the more
important in this neighborhood for education to reclaim its
capacity of alleviating the local human agency.
Although we did not specifcally analyze the conditions
of the educational system in East-Baltimore, I believe that
previously encountered issues defnitely have had their
impacts on the educational system. But also vice versa,
the educational system must have clear impact on the
neighborhood.
So the question remains: What could education specifcally
mean for a neighborhood like East-Baltimore?
Education can provide for an intermediate landscape
between major players like Johns Hopkins and the
inhabitants of East-Baltimore. The low threshold of
the educational facilities form a perfect entry point to
provide for the people while engaging a multiplicity of
organizations in a structured way.
The fact that education is mainly oriented at youth,
knowledge apprehended in a learning environment
embedded in the urban tissue will be easily transmitted
to these childrens homes, giving opportunity to break the
cycle of despair more profoundly from the bottom up.
Education is responsible for teaching the futures
workforce that needs to continue being competitive on
our continually globalizing market and thus has a major
infuence in the economic sustainability of a country. In
this sense education has the ability to tap into the local
capacity of East-Baltimore and to create an economic
viability.
In the current economic downturn a reassessment
is needed of the direct relations between funds and
action. Ineffcient NGO-networks, tabula rasa strategies,
dis-appreciation of local potential has caused for a
deconstructed landscape void of a healthy civil society.
By reorienting this system of fows towards education, it
could become the new polestar towards which all other
organizations orient themselves to continue working in a
more cost-effcient way.
130
With a healthy family structure, an inspiring school
environment, low crime and dropout rates, no parent
should question the capacity of public education to form
a proper base for their child to become a valuable asset
in todays society. The reality is, unfortunately, often very
different. As previously pointed out in the analysis, our
area of focus, East-Baltimore, is characterized by heavily
distorted family structures due to high rates in organized
crime. It is an enormous struggle for children from an
unstable background to keep their interest in conventional
ways of teaching. [1]
Furthermore, the deteriorated school environments deal
with low funding capacities which are tied to the low real
estate values of the surrounding properties. This link
between real estate values and schools funding, to me,
seems an anomaly in US policies denying the chance for
communities like East-Baltimore to reverse their decline.
The abandonment, vacancies, inadequately maintained
infrastructures, ... all add up to the depreciation of real
estate values and as a consequence, the remaining
residents are basically being robbed from their right to
education. [2]
There seems to be a discontinuity in child care. While
parents go to work from 8am to lets say 5 to 6pm,
children go to school from 9am to 3pm, leaving a gap in
between where statistically seen juvenile criminal activity
is the highest. An inadequate provision of after school
programs causes for the children to hang out on the
streets, becoming vulnerable to and confronted with the
organized crime that dominates the area. [3]
As mentioned before, high dropout rates are among the
biggest problems that the US education deals with. all
Education in East-Baltimore
Todays dynamics within educational provision
131
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1. Factors distorting normal family structures
2. Real Estate - School Funding
3. Discontinuity in child care
4. High dropout rates
previously mentioned dynamics have their share in the
origin of this problem. Although many argue that this
problem is declining, unemployment rates of dropouts
have increased enormously over the past decade. This is
mainly because more companies start applying the policy
of not hiring anyone that has dropped out. [4]
After this fairly negative story I should also mention
that there are sparks of hope and great efforts are
put forward by Baltimore to improve its provision of a
qualitative learning environment. The city of Baltimore,
even within these harsh realities, still manages to put
forward its public education system as a nationwide
example. Baltimore is highlighted as a case study for its
accomplishments in bringing students back to school
andpartnering with organizations for solutionsto reverse
its longstanding trend of low graduation rates and high
dropout rates. Last year, the city noted a near-historically
low 4 percent dropout rate, and 66 percent graduation
rate. Baltimore schools, in fact, are doing great despite
the harsh circumstances of the families on the one hand
and the economic situation on the other.
There is certainly potential for education to extend its
scope of activities and to take their social engagement a
step further.
133
In the area of East-Baltimore there are 4 schools which I
like to address as potential players within a strategy for
the neighborhood: Collington Square Elementary School,
Dr. Rayner Browne Elementary School, Tench Tilghman
Elementary School and the East Baltimore Community
School. In total, these schools teach about 1400
schoolkids, about 98% are of African-American origin.
This once again proves the immensely segregated nature
of this neighborhood.
The Tench Tilghman, Collington Square and Dr. Rayner
Browne schools are all Title I funding schools, which
means they get funding aimed at closing the achievement
gap between low-income students and other students.
The East Baltimore Community School on the other hand
is an initiative from the EBDI
[1]
, which is mainly funded by
Johns Hopkins Hospital. Both Collington Square and Dr.
Rayner Browne schools are Charter schools
[2]
.
A citywide initiative called The Breakfast Club provides
free breakfast in all public schools in Baltimore. A great
initiative with great intentions but when reading the menu
a discontinuity between the underlying philosophy and
the reality can be discovered.
Further can be stated that all schools engage in
extracurricular activities to some extend. Programs are
regularly organized with the purpose to keep children
off the streets and give them the opportunity to further
develop their skills and interests.
1 East Baltimore Development Initiative
2 Charter schools are primary or secondary schools that receive
public money (and like other public education facilities, may also receive
private donations) but are not subject to some of the rules, regulations,
and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some
type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth
in each schools charter. 5. Schematic representation of the characteristics of the 4 schools
134
6. Collington Square Elementary School 7. Dr. Rayner Browne Elementary School
135
8. Tench Tilghman Elementary School 9. East-Baltimore Community School
136
Three landscapes currently hold the potential for education
to reform their scope and become more embedded in
the East-Baltimore community as a catalyst for change.
Firstly, there is the programmatic landscape in which a
reconfguration of the stakeholders around the provision
of education can change this landscape. Secondly, there
is the physical landscape of abandonment. Currently this
abandonment results in a variety of hazardous situations
for the neighborhood while, these vacant lands and
abandoned buildings could potentially become an added
value to the school system. And then the last landscape is
that of the infrastructures which due to the abandonment
and vacancies have become oversized or even obsolete.
These three landscapes are the structuring foundations
for my strategy for the educational system.
The frst landscape I approached in a more programmatic
way. For these schools to potentially create a functional
intermediate landscape, they should be positioned in
between institutions and policy makers on the larger
scale on the one hand and smaller everyday practices
on the other hand. Two major stakeholders that could be
potentially important players on the large, coordinating
scale and that are physically present in the area are the
Johns Hopkins Hospital and MICA PLACE.
[1]
Both of these stakeholders have a major interest in
improving the conditions of East-Baltimore. First of all
there is Johns Hopkins. This hospitals main concern is
health provision. In fact, as stated earlier in this thesis,
it is one of the biggest health providers in the country.
Paradoxically, it is embedded in one of the most unhealthy
environments.
1 MICA Programs Linking Art, Culture and Education
Towards a learning landscape
Educations embeddedness in a lost landscape.
137
Until today Johns Hopkins healthcare is mainly oriented
at remedial healthcare and located in a very inaccessible
facility for the neighboring inhabitants. Although they
have many programs for drug prevention and other urban
illnesses, they lack a profound strategy to cope with
East-Baltimores complexity. The development policies
are characterized by a tabula rasa development which is
very disconnected from the neighborhood and neglects
any hidden potential. In light of a strategy connected with
the educational facilities, Johns Hopkins can go beyond
these conventions and create a new strategy aimed at
providing preventive healthcare which can elevate the
surrounding neighborhoods conditions. This way, it has
the potential to lower its threshold and become a more
inclusive institution.
Secondly MICA
[2]
, a school of art, has renovated the former
St. Wenceslaus School in 2007 in which it has located MICA
2 Maryland Institute for Culture and Art
10. The schools, MICA and Johns Hopkins Hospital
PLACE. This school has strategically chosen this building,
located between Johns Hopkins Hospital, Monument St.
and the railway line, to provide a hub for study in social
innovation design and civic engagement strategies. This
place has already become an important educational hub
for communication between policy makers and residents
and serves as an important example in the frst place but,
as well as an important component in a strategy, together
with the other educational facilities. The students of MICA
can be involved in the further development of social
innovation practices within this educational strategy. They
will have the capacity to test this strategy to reality through
minor interventions.
11. Threefolded scheme of civil society actors
139
In order to understand the potentials of the second
landscape of abandonment we found it interesting to
map this defning element in the current landscape in
East-Baltimore. The map [left] displays the enormous
quantity of this vacancy in the area. The abandoned
buildings are displayed in red and the vacant lots in
orange. The defning character of this vacancy leaves the
East-Baltimore landscape with a desolate feeling in many
places. This further boosts the feeling of insecurity. On
top of that, many practices concerning these vacant lots
cause for them to loose their potential of public use [top].
First of all, there is the lead in the soil of these lots that has
caused for almost 50% of the children in the area to have
lead poisoning. This is caused by the lead-containing
paint that has been used in many of the houses in the area.
With further deterioration of these houses more and more
of these lead-particles are absorbed by the soil. Therefore
a thorough cleaning effort should be implemented. The
interest of the Johns Hopkins Hospital to embed itself in a
healthier environment should be a big enough incentive for
the hospital to invest in this cleanup. With an improvement
of this landscape and the neighborhood with that, they will
be able to reduce their current astronomical spending on
security and programs for drug prevention.
Then, the abandonemnt in itself causes neglect of this
potential public space with illegal dumping as a result
or with fencing to again prevent illegal dumping from
happening. The blue light surveillance, no loitering signs
and lastly, the over-infrastructural character of these
spaces further diminishes the quality of these spaces.
Nevertheless it should be said that the potential of this
quantity of open space is enormous and could in stead
of being a hazard for this neighborhood and its major
stakeholders, become an asset.
12. Tactics of exclusion concerning the vacant lots 13. Lead containing paint gradually peeling off
140
HEBCAC Community Center M&M Coin Laundry Johns Hopkins Durham St.
Abandoned Houses
Amazing Grace
Evangelical Church

Super Pride Market
Johns Hopkins Drug
Prevention Program
HEBCAC Dayspring Program HEBCAC Center
Former industrial wharehouse

Former industrial buildings

North-East Market

Former industrial buildings
Our feld work has been a major asset in search of
small everyday practices that can be connected with
educational activities in East-Baltimore. A combination of
already existing networks and new potential components
can strengthen the provision of quality activities that
can balance out the appeal of criminal activities. The
illustrations on this page display the physical presence
of the different players that can potentially be networked.
Many of these buildings are now abandoned but could
be potentially used for programmes benefting the
community. I will elaborate further on activities of each of
these players and how I potentially include them in my
strategy when I discuss my design proposals.
14. Valuable constructed landscape
15. Building library
16. Matrix of vacancies [right]
141
100 20
Johns Hopkins
G
a
y

s
t
.
Orleans st.
Fayette st.
Monument st.
B
r
o
a
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s
t
.
17. Hierarchy of streets [left]
143
17. Hierarchy of streets [left]
As a third component, based on accessibility and
connectivity, I intended to map the hierarchy of streets
in East-Baltimore. A few major streets connect Johns
Hopkins Hospital with its commuting workers. The most
important north-south connection is Broadway, cutting
right through the middle of the Johns Hopkins Facility.
Attaching itself to this road is Gay St., a turnpike road
in direct connection with the suburbs. In the south there
are two roads connecting the hospital: Orleans St. and
Fayette St. A second hierarchy can be found north-south
being Patterson Park Ave. and Wolfe St. Besides that there
is as well another east-west connection which belongs in
this second hierarchy because of its major commercial
importance in the neighborhood, Monument St.
The third level of streets is the regular grid being, with
some exceptions, about 120m X 120m.
The fourth hierarchy, very specifc to areas like this in
Baltimore, consists of the small alleys in the back of the
row-houses. This is a very fne-grained network of roads
mainly used by pedestrians.
Relating this map to the vacancy map allowed me to fnd
a structure of these small roads that can be catalogued
as underused infrastructure [orange]. This provides the
potential of, on the one hand, rethinking mobility in this
area, on the other hand, rethinking the physical presence
of this infrastructure in the area. Much of this infrastructure
has already been lost with, for example, the tabula rasa
developments of the EBDI. To my opinion, there lays
quality in the fneness of this structure as opposed to the
major roads in and around the Johns Hopkins facility.
18. Broadway
19. Orleans St.
20. Regular grid structure with finegrainded alley system
120M
1
2
0
M
144
These landscapes have the potential of being reactivated
through an implementation of a variety of educational and
after school activities. When looking closely at the map of
the idle infrastructure and overlaying it with the schools
in the area, I discovered a correlation between these
schools and this network of idle streets. This creates
an opportunity to restructure the landscape around the
schools by using this infrastructure as a guiding principle.
To further structure these vacancies I chose to strategically
search for vacant lots that can form platforms around the
educational facilities for the schools to have the ability to
develop their activities beyond the confnes of their walls.
This all lead to the creation of educational platforms in East-
Baltimore that have the capacity to change the current
dynamics in the neighborhood. I propose three of these
platforms with each of them their own characteristics
though following the same physical guiding principle. The
diversity of programmes organized on these platforms
gives the opportunity for the youth to fnd their own
preference of activities. But only by physically intervening
in the landscape these programmes will be rooted more
profoundly in the neighborhood.
The interventions intend to create a learning landscape
but as well by making use of lost or hidden structures it
tries to give the opportunity to the residents to learn about
the landscape they live in.
In the following chapter I discuss each of the design
proposals in more detail.
21. Lost and underutilized infrastructural landscape
22. Vacancies connected to this infrastructural lanscape 23. Schematic representation of the design proposals [right]
100
24. Zooms on the sports landscape
Rethinking vacant lots as Active Fields
Co-managing urban spaces to reboost school infrastructures
With staggering rates of obesity in the United States, one
of Johns Hopkins preventive health strategies should be
to get youth to exercise again not only within the school-
hours but also beyond that. The means to reach this goal
is to extend and diversify East-Baltimores community
based and educational sports facilities and embedding
them within a platform for healthy exercise.
These sports felds will be co-managed by Collington
Square Elementary and Dr. Rayner Browne School but
by the Day Spring organization. This organization
already active in organizing extracurricular activities, is
centrally positioned within the platform and will form part
of the management. This organization can extend the
management of these felds beyond the school-hours
so that not only the educational system but as well the
community can beneft from this development. It can
provide the necessary materials for a diversity of sports.
25. Plan of the design 100
S
U
P
E
R

P
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E

M
A
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K
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R
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26. Perspective view on the sports platform
149
The topography gives an opportunity to change the
characteristic of this landscape with terraces that
become useful for sports activities. Materials derived
from the deconstruction of some of the abandoned
houses surrounding the area can be used to create these
new public spaces. The strategy intends to respect the
characteristics of the former landscape through reuse
of these materials. But moreover by structuring these
platforms on the basis of former infrastructural spaces,
it respects as well the layout of the neighborhood and
intends to remind people that this layout serves perfectly
to be changed into an active landscape.
At frst, a social design experiment can be implemented
by a student group of MICA PLACE to fnd out what
kind of materializations the different felds should have
to be appropriate for a diversity of sports. Temporary
sports events can give an exact calculation of what the
surrounding neighborhoods might like or not. Respecting
the layed out structure of the landscape this could
eventually grow into an active corridor providing the
neighborhood with the necessary healthy after school
activities.
27. Houses to be recycled into the landscape 28. Calculations on recycled materials
150
Johns Hopkins interest in health care combined with the
HEBCAC plan to transform industrial patrimony along
the railway to local food production places gives way to
this unifed corridor of distinct agricultural activities. The
vastness of this nearly completely abandoned strip is
excellent for providing healthy food for the educational
facilities, a learning environment on feld to fork awareness,
research on hybrid herbal medicine and a reinstatement
of a former river. Johns Hopkins Hospital on one side of
this strip which catches an enormous amount of water
and the old river structure coming in on the other side are
both great sources of water. Just like the fow of this water
and its distinct origins, I intend to structure the planting
of the landscape from medical research oriented to
gradually change into planting for productive purposes.
In this sense the landscape would provide for both the
community and Johns Hopkins Hospital and become a
common ground for both to connect upon.
100
Merging medical felds and productive landscapes
Designing the friction area between Johns Hopkins
Hospital and the Center for Maryland Agriculture.
A
A
A
A
152
The diagram on the previous page shows how this gradual
change in the landscape from medical to productive
outputs can be implemented. A quest for native species
brought about this matrix of plants that could be planted
in the area. Of course this is only exemplary and further
research is defnitely needed. Besides the organization
on the basis of outputs they are also organized by
size, aquatic characteristics and fnally on the section
I intended to show what the resulting color pattern
would be in the landscape. The aquatic characteristics
are important because, on the one hand, there will be
constructed wetlands at the Johns Hopkins side and, on
the other hand, the lowest point in the section, already
today is submerged when it rains. The picture in the right
column is an actual picture of this lowest point in the area.
The image below shows what this landscape could look
like with in the front scene constructed wetlands and the
Johns Hopkins Herbal Medicine Lab to extend in the back
into community gardens and other agricultural activities.
By creating such a vast strip, this landscape feature
becomes a visible change in the city which positions
Johns Hopkins Hospital in a local productive cycle, with
the simple revenue of better health around its facility.
Employment is created and the schools have access to
more and better food. And last but not least, this site can
become a learning landscape for the children to learn
about the origin of what they consume.
29. Duck swimming in the lowest point in East-Baltimore
30. View on the agro-medical landscape
153
The HEBCACs involvement in the reclaiming of this site,
is mainly the reconversion of the old patrimony along the
railroad but it can as well become the managing partner,
employing people from the neighborhood to work on
these felds as part of the HEBCACs leadership training
programmes. After the reconversion of these buildings
a Baltimore City department in the Center for Maryland
Agriculture can occupy these buildings and operate
a campus on agricultural learning for urban residents.
Currently this organization has a facility far outside of the
city, but I see potential in connecting this organization
with urban residents as part of a strategy to relink city and
region.
Around the HEBCAC Community Center and the EBDI
school, the agricultural strip can change nature and
become oriented at providing community gardens
available for East-Baltimores inhabitants. In this way,
the existing popular community gardens can have more
space and visibility. An expansion of the EBDI schools
playgrounds will be necessary as this brand new school
will become more popular. Furthermore, I believe that the
remaining houses on this strip should be reconversed to
meet todays needs in the housing market. By clearing out
the inner block, space becomes available to extend these
houses into this space. With the former stream coming
through and potentially holding water again, this space
could be naturalized and become a semi-public space
that intends to showcase the existence of this stream.
59. Center for Maryland Agriculture - Baltimore City Department
31. Perspective on developments.
154
From the campus of Johns Hopkins Hospital, Monument
Street stretches eastward as an economic spine. This
street forms part of the federal Main-Street Funding
program. It is one of the main attractors in the area for
small businesses and shops. Unfortunately, once off this
street, the environment becomes a lot less vivid.
This strategy aims at broadening the scope of this
street by reviving some of the perpendicular streets
that have become obsolete, by applying material and
topographic changes to the street-scape but also setting
up a programmatic network that supports these changes.
Parallelling this spine with a variety of activities that are
related to this economic activity, could potentially activate
this back yard. The Tench Tilghman school can develop
an economic activity to strengthen their educational
provision and by doing that beneft from this Monument
street economic activity.
Provision of workshop and food production spaces where
commodities can be produced to sell locally in the North-
East Market, for instance, could revive these back spaces.
This stand in North-East Market can become a project of
MICA PLACE to turn around the current situation of this
market being a source of very low quality food.
32. Section over Tench Tilghman school and surroundings [above]
33. Programmatic scheme of the Tench Tilghman platform [top right]
34. Plan of the Tench Tilghman Platform [below right]
Accomodating parallel activities
Creating a cascade network of platforms branching
from Monument Street
100
A variety of open lots can be designated to the Tench
Tilghman School for the children to creatively make use
off. They can become extensions of the already present
gardening initiative of the Amazing Grace Lutheran
Church, dedicated to feed those in need of it.
The open space in front of the Johns Hopkins drug
prevention programme building has the potential to
become a public venue, designated to open air events
and workshops to further strengthen their strategy to fght
substance abuse. At this moment, like many other of
Johns Hopkins initiatives the building resembles an offce
type of building, closed off to the public and denying the
accessibility a public issue, like drug abuse, deserves.
Lastly some abandoned houses close to the school can
be transformed into places for temporary shelter. Many
children live in unbearable home situations and need
temporary provision of a place to stay. With so many
houses abandoned in this area these could potentially
serve this purpose.
The image above shows the crossroad of Monument st.
at the point of the North-East Market where through light
elevation the street becomes part of a pedestrian platform
connecting the market to MICA PLACE. The same strategy
is shown in the image below at the crossroad with the
Amazing Grace church. The red building resembles the
new youth operated venue.
35. View on crossing Monument St. at North-East Market
36. View on crossing Monument St. at Youth Center
157
Here on the right I have intended to make two schemes
representing the activated educational landscape on a
time scale of twenty-four hours. The top one concerns the
children going to elementary school and the bottom one
the adolescents. This time scale is important because it
shows how the gap between parental care and school
hours can be flled up with activities like sports, workshops,
a youth center, agricultural activities, ... Organizing these
activities not only on a structured landscape but also on
the basis of time, so that one activity balances with the
other one, is an important feature to activate this newly
constructed landscape.
At the center of the ring is the shelter-facility which should
be the last option for these children to be taken care of.
Nevertheless it is a crucial component within the harsh
realities of East-Baltimore In the design for the Monument
St. platform a few houses,close to the Tench Tilghman
school, are designated to be housing this shelter
programme. By reusing the housing infrastructure, the
children are not alienated from their normal environment
while being temporarily sheltered.
37. 24h Time scheme of activities for children
38. 24h Time scheme of activities for adolescents
158
Societys resilience lies in the capacity to
resilience within our youth. We owe it to
our society to give space to the mental and
physical development of our children. In the
end they hold a tremendous value in human
potential, a resource we can no longer afford
to waste in our advancement to a better
future.
In my opinion, this reclaiming of the human
subject within the field of Urbanisms of
Inclusion is directly linked to our systems
of education. Therefore this project
displays a possible strategy of extending
educations incremental impact on todays
society through an implementation of urban
interventions tied to the local capacity.
The Learning Landscape
100
161
References
Kaminer, T. & Robles-Duran M. & Sohn H. (Eds.) (2011). Urban
Asymetries. Studies and Projects on Neoliberal Urbanization.,
Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.
Maryland Native Plant Society. About Natives Database
Available at: http://mdflora.org/aboutnatives.html
[accessed on August 10th 2011]
Sanchez, C. (2011). Schools Out: Americas Dropout Crisis. [Radio
Interview on National Public Radio, USA]
Available at: http://www.npr.org/series/
[accessed on July 26th 2011]
USDE (2010), National Center for Education Statistics
Available at: http://nces.ed.gov/globallocator/
[accessed on July 10th 2011]
Images
All images are produced by author accept:
[6, 7, 8, 9] Google Earth
[16] Google Earth
[18, 19] Google Earth

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