Baltimore is eyeing a massive, 20-block redevelopment

Baltimore is eyeing a massive, 20-block redevelopment in one of the city’s most blighted neighborhoods. The city has tapped Urban Design Associates (UDA), a Pittsburgh firm with extensive New Urbanism credentials, to lead the planning process. The mixed-use proposal would be anchored by a new Johns Hopkins Hospital “bioscience park,” according to the Baltimore Sun. In place of desolate blocks of abandoned housing, planners envision a community of mixed-income housing, new businesses, and parks, according to the Sun. “We want the sort of measurable, visible change and improvement that East Baltimore wants and needs,” Mayor Martin O’Malley says. The project could “easily reach hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to the paper, but the catch is that all of the interested parties must agree on the plan. O’Malley says that he will “not force it down anybody’s throat.” UDA has a lot of experience working with inner-city neighborhood groups, but this project could be a challenge. An organization called Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition, representing at least a dozen community groups, will work with UDA in organizing the meetings with stakeholders. One major hurdle is the animosity that neighborhood organizations feel toward Johns Hopkins and urban renewal, going back decades, according to Robert Freedman of UDA. “So much depends on whether people can get together and put aside their differences,” he says.