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“If you want to seed a place with activity, put out food.”   - William H. Whyte (from PPS website ) The glow of companionship: Faidley's at Lexington Market in Baltimore  (photo: ArchPlan) A single food truck can add community (photo: ArchPlan) This is the third in a series of articles investigating building types and uses that create community. The previous articles addressed public libraries and schools ; next week's article will take a look at churches. The world over there is little in cities that can stir public sentiment as much as messing with the public markets. No wonder, since markets are as old as cities. Markets do not only reflect history and the various methods of production and distribution, but also a succession of trends in urban The historic Paris Market Les Halles development and planning.  In the middle ages bestowing market right to a town made a place a real town. In European history books the recognition of the public market counts as the date for t...

One of the standard figures of speech that politicians like to use is "kicking the can down the road." In a time when it counts as long-term thinking to set the alarm for the next morning, this is exactly what happens time and again.  Even though infrastructure is needed for an economy to run it is initiated by "the government" which makes it an easy target for political play.  Infrastructure is an investment without a direct or short-term return, and so is often the first victim when politicians run on austerity and fiscal prudence but really cater to immediate gratification and private consumption at the expense of long term thinking and communal benefits.    Rail Transit. Who pays is main question at this time And so it is that the good people of Maryland elected a new governor who ran on the promise of lower taxes and smaller government, and who disparaged two long-term public infrastructure transit projects during the campaign.  These projects rep...

There is hardly a city left in America that doesn't have a Complete Streets policy, and  Baltimore is no exception. Unfortunately, while talk is universal, action is much harder to find. Stop for pedestrians: Baltimore traffic guard While many cities have been relatively quick to paint a number of bike-lanes on their streets, a comprehensive shift from car-centric planning to planning that puts the pedestrian, bicycle, and transit first is barely detectable in most of these cities, save for a few. Interestingly, those cities that set the shining examples have planners and DOT leaders who are women.  Rina Cutler , deputy mayor for transportation in Philadelphia, Janet Attarian, who is in charge of  Complete Streets in Chicago  and most famously, former transportation commissioner  Janette Sadik Khan  of New York.  Baltimore, too, has a female transportation planner, Valorie LaCour , as  Division Chief  of the Department of Tran...