Throughout Baltimore city, you will see benches coining the city as “The Greatest City in America.” These benches came about from former Baltimore Mayer Martin O’Malley to put a more positive light on Baltimore City, which had—and still has—a negative reputation for extremely high drug use and crime per capita. When juxtaposed with a run-down building or piles of trash behind a bench claiming the city is the best in America, the benches initially received significant public pushback, but are now a staple of Baltimore.
The Baltimore redlining map was published in 1937 by the Federal Homeowners’ Loan Corporation. In drafting the map, cartographers used the colors red, yellow, blue, and green to “grade” Baltimore neighborhoods based on potential risk factors for residential mortgage lenders. Areas shown in red, “Fourth Grade” or “D”, were considered the highest risk areas. These areas were poor neighborhoods that had a higher concentration of Black residents. Within Baltimore City, there is a clear divide between socioeconomic status as well as race, to this day, as demonstrated by the recent demographics of the city shown in the map below. The redlining further racialized the city, putting more resources into the wealthier and whiter parts.
Living on the outskirts of Baltimore city with most of my family and friends living in various parts of the city has given me a perspective into both the wealthier and historically ‘nicer’ parts of the city, as well as the areas with fewer resources. In the wealthier areas, such as Roland Park, there are noticeably more trees than in the inner city, as shown in the diagram below. It is evident that the redlining map parallels the percent tree cover map, which highlights some of the built-in inequalities in Baltimore by way of environmental racism.
With family living in West Baltimore and a major in Environmental Engineering, the environmental disparities within the city are of great interest to me. Environmental racism is a particular issue for Baltimore since Baltimore is extremely vulnerable to climate change Much of Baltimore lies barely above sea level and there is a significant amount of local flooding, waterlogged soil, and backed-up sewage. The lowest-lying neighborhoods suffer most, and these are unsurprisingly those inhabited disproportionately by poor Baltimoreans of color. Additionally, Baltimore is a very car-centric economy. This further victimizes poor communities, for example, Route 40 which cuts across West Baltimore—a low income, predominately Black area.
While Baltimore has a lot of structural and systematic issues, it is still a beautiful city full of life, community, and culture. Baltimore lives up to the claim on the benches as The Greatest City in America.
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