A former Baltimore city planner walks you through the planning boo-boos, segregationist tendencies and “weirdo” neo-dystopian 1970s design sensibilities behind the odd development pattern in the area near the green Roland Park hillside where the Keswick Multi-Care Center has proposed a senior living facility. (You know, the project greeted by Roland Parkers like a spent-fuel rod waste dump?)
Read the rest of this entry »

The little ditch in Curtis Bay has a story to tell — of crime and punishment, of death and rebirth, and of one man’s singular journey, just now coming full circle.

The ditch, in a gritty, urban kind of way, is looking up these days. Sycamores, black locusts and other pioneering species sprout from its banks. A hawk hunts the abandoned industrial landscape it drains.

Its waters, trickling toward Baltimore Harbor and the Chesapeake Bay are murky, junky; but the vivid, toxic colors of arsenic, chromate and other chemicals that ate away at Steve McAllister’s clothing are long gone.
Read the rest of this entry »