Building a resilient Baltimore

Since 2005, I have been an active member of the Baltimore Homeownership Preservation Coalition, which helps Baltimore residents address the potential loss of their home to foreclosure. We recognized the problem early, and mobilized to get the message out to people in mortgage trouble that they should seek help from a nonprofit housing counselor. The […]

Baltimore’s case for Google fiberoptic investment is more than just stunts

What if Baltimore was a national leader in developing new technologies for the future of the Internet? It’s a real possibility and many of us here in Baltimore are working hard to make it a reality. On February 10, Google announced plans to build out a new, extremely fast fiberoptic Internet service in one or […]

Open schools/lifelong learning

America has two kinds of schools: the first are well-equipped private and suburban public institutions or magnet/charter schools with inviting facilities where kids feel at home, feel known, and can grow in a nurturing environment. Having invested in their infrastructure, these “beacon” schools have a vested interest in staying open long after the school day […]

A fund for Baltimore

Most suburban residents live in a metropolitan district in order to share the good things the city can offer. Sadly, we enjoy those benefits without paying a proportional share of their costs. Whether we use the urban setting for employment, or as a cultural, commercial, educational or recreational base, we rely on the city for […]

History is in our hands

We are living in an extraordinary time. The country has elected its first ever African-American President who is also our first community-organizer-in-chief. The country is experiencing an economic meltdown as serious as any since the Great Depression. States and cities are experiencing budget shortfalls, while families, workers and communities are hurting. We know that the […]

Charles North Vision Plan

at the center. in the mix. Can Baltimore create a regional destination that is not on the waterside? In the last 10 days, there has been widespread media coverage of the release of the Charles North Vision Plan by Mayor Dixon, the Central Baltimore Partnership and the Baltimore Development Corporation. Surely a country that can […]

So…where’s the bailout for Baltimore?

It must be lost in the jumbled priorities of Washington.  And it’s a real shame. Because with a little help, cities like Baltimore could bail out the entire country. Everyone seems to agree that America needs to become energy independent.  And that we need to find a way to lower energy prices.  And that we […]

The audacity of simplicity: Baltimore needs higher wages

For many decades, Baltimore was a great engine of the American Dream – a blue-collar city, where residents without a college degree could find a good, family-supporting job. But over the past generation, most of those mostly manufacturing jobs were replaced by lower-paying service sector jobs – with disastrous results for many Baltimoreans. But why […]

Transforming the urban ecosystem

Is urban ecology an oxymoron? Not at all. The sooner we recognize that cities, people, and nature are inextricably linked, the better off we will all be. In order to broaden our focus from fixing what’s broken, we can treat this city as a design problem, as a system of interrelated parts, and begin to […]

Uniting Baltimore through one connected park

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.” Daniel Burnham, 1846-1912, architect and urban visionary Imagine a Baltimore where everyone lived within a few blocks of a park. Where you could walk easily throughout the city in a safe green network that connects school […]