Cleaning and Greening in Baltimore City

This semester, I am fortunate enough to be working as a graduate assistant under my department chairperson of the City and Regional Planning Program. If I have not yet mentioned this before, I'm a student at Morgan State University, an HBCU in  Baltimore. So far, the program has been terrific, and this, my second semester, has already proven to be exciting. Most of the excitement comes from a university-wide initiative to reconnect our school with the surrounding community. This is the project for which I am assisting my chair. We have an economic development grant and are researching and evaluating the communities surrounding MSU. These communities make up most of the Northeast quadrant of  Baltimore city. Yesterday, we held a board meeting with representatives from local community associations. At this meeting, I had heard so many varying viewpoints, and learned so much about this city.

 I was actually surprised to hear about the rising interest in some of the things that an environmental urbanist values: buying local, eating organic and healthy, and keeping the city green.A few years ago, Baltimore City launched the initiative "Cleaner, Greener Baltimore." Unfortunately, it hasn't gotten as much media hype as many would have hoped. But that doesn't mean that city residents haven't taken it's values to heart. Whether or not they do it for sustainability or environmental issues, city residents are actively "cleaning and greening" their neighborhoods. Sometimes, the city will be able to pay for these activities, but when the city can't, the residents fork up their own dollars to bring dumpsters in to dispose of recyclables and waste.

There are numerous other initiatives and programs in the city. Most weren't created for sustainability reasons, but all immediately effect the environment in positive ways. The Vacants to Value program enacted by Mayor Rawlings Blake encourages vacant spaces- which often become dumping grounds for trash- to be revitalized and occupied. This improves the livability of our city, making it a more viable place to live and invest in. The Department of Transportation (DOT) has also been "greening" the streetscapes by implementing storm water management technologies. These were introduced to control our cities terrible storm water issues (due to the extreme lack of natural and porous surfaces), and it's definitely a wonderful program for people like myself, who hope to see even more environmental initiatives pop up over the years, to hear about.

The assistantship will hopefully continue to expose me to the many different programs and opportunities Baltimore currently has that benefit the environment while at the same time strengthening our city.