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Recently voices have been heard across the divide: Ta Nahesi Coates is on every media channel, DWatkins has been made an official Baltimore SUN columnist, and a bunch of experts descend on ground zero of the unrest that shook Baltimore on April 27 and the city transportation department conducts a listening session there.   Metro station at Penn North (photo: ArchPlan) But aside from those overtures, there is no denying that the area where Pennsylvania and NorthAvenue s intersect is an unknown for those who live in the more prosperous parts of the city. Likewise, Guilford and Mount Washington are a world apart for residents of the communities of Upton, Druid Heights, Harlem Park or Rosemont, to name just a few. The same statement could be made for just about any American city of a certain size. One of the insidious traits of segregation is how easy it makes it for the haves to ignore the plight of the have-nots. For most whites, concentrated poverty and its many ills are an abstra...

U  While some areas, especially in the U.S., are still fighting the decades-old battle of car versus transit (Exhibit #1 the governor of Maryland's killing of the ready-to-construct Baltimore Red Line in favor of more rural roads), others declare this to be the season for "alternative" ideas in which transit takes on some futuristic, previously unknown shape. After the City of Baltimore issued a very open-ended request for proposals for transportation ideas, it has become the target of such concepts which in one form or another have been batted around for at least as many decades as the cars versus transit battle has been going on. The idea always seems to be how the comfort and convenience of the private cocoon that is the car can be combined with the convenience of not having to drive.   SkyTran concept drawing: Straight from the comic books Some concepts seem to come straight from comic books such as the SkyTran , a monorail like the 1975 system in Morgantown but sleek...

The arrival of a Starbucks, a brew-pub, a Trader Joe's grocery store or the installation of a farmers market all have been identified as metrics indicating that a neighborhood "has arrived". Add to this list beer gardens, sidewalk eating, food halls, food markets, food trucks and urban farms and one has a complete list of popular benchmarks for urban revitalization and gentrification;  all have to do to with food and drink! New Crepe vendor at the Mt Vernon MarketPlace in Baltimore (photo ArchPlan) If we experience our cities today no longer a smoggy foul stinking place in which residents toil day and night in factories, do laundry or cook meals for large families on wood burning stoves but as places where people frolic, attend festivals and hang out under sunbrellas or mobile heaters (depending on the season) imbibing or sort through elaborately stacked tiny food towers on large plates, it is because, yes, life has changed. An ever growing number of people not only eat-o...

The heroes of America have always been the start-ups, the innovators, job creators, entrepreneurs and the risk takers, those who believe in an idea and run with it against all odds and succeed by sheer will. It’s a narrative upon which this nation was founded and that has grown mythical proportions. It may have reached its most fevered climactic expression in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," still the favorite story of Republican presidential contenders. But it gets new juice from a totally different angle: Figures we call techies, hackers, and disrupters are in many respects a re-incarnation of this American hero, and once again high hopes are pinned to their success.   Top five States by employment in IT industries The intensity and power of the innovator-as-hero energy was on display last week when the "creative class" took a couple of hours out of their busy schedules to celebrate a godfather of IT disruption who came to Baltimore on the occasion of  Innovation ...

Diesel, the city and the Chesapeake Bay In the wake of the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal we received a rich diet of media stories about corporate brazenness (not really new), lax government oversight (nothing new either), a very cozy relationship between European regulatory agencies and the auto industry (probably a revelation to many who believe governments are stronger in Europe) and the always astounding greed that plagues the governance of large corporations (an insight that quickly fades debacle after debacle, from Enron, to Lehman Bros., to BP). But behind all that is an even bigger story, one of competing interests between nations in the race to lower CO2, and cities trying to comply with the Clean Air Act. The story of competing principles and different ideas about what it means to have clean air and what the right priorities should be in the wake of air pollution, dwindling resources, and climate change. The cheating debacle concerning VW's Diesel engine and the a...