RACISM IN THE STRUCTURE: BRIEF HISTORY OF 20 TH CENTURY BALTIMORE - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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RACISM IN THE STRUCTURE: BRIEF HISTORY OF 20 TH CENTURY BALTIMORE - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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RACISM IN THE STRUCTURE: BRIEF HISTORY OF 20 TH CENTURY BALTIMORE Martin French & Lauren Schiszik Baltimore City Department of Planning PLANNING ACADEMY SESSION 1 April 16, 2019 Baltimore City Department of Planning 1 R ACISM IN THE S

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RACISM IN THE STRUCTURE: BRIEF HISTORY OF 20TH CENTURY BALTIMORE Martin French & Lauren Schiszik Baltimore City Department of Planning PLANNING ACADEMY SESSION 1 April 16, 2019

Baltimore City Department of Planning 1

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2 Baltimore City Department of Planning

RACISM IN THE STRUCTURE

Which Structure? Built Environment Legal Structure Regulatory Structure

  • How were these structures created and upheld over

time?

  • How have they impacted generations of citizens?
  • How can we ensure that planning is inclusive and

equitable today?

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Source: “Inventory of Residential Blight: Findings. Baltimore, Maryland.” Baltimore Urban Renewal And Housing Agency, October

  • 1964. Used with permission of the University of Baltimore.

Baltimore originally was 3 separate towns in Baltimore County: Baltimore Town, Jonestown, Fell’s Point In 1851, Baltimore City became its own jurisdiction, separate from the surrounding County

DEVELOPMENT HISTORY

Which Structure?

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4 Baltimore City Department of Planning

DEVELOPMENT HISTORY

1867 Map of Baltimore

Source: “Map of Baltimore, 1867” by Samuel Augustus Mitchell. Wikimedia Commons

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5 Baltimore City Department of Planning

BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Circa 1860 Plat Map Aerial view of same block today

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BUILT ENVIRONMENT

1893 “Slum” Criteria

6 Baltimore City Department of Planning

Considerations:

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7 Baltimore City Department of Planning

LEGAL STRUCTURE - LOCAL

1910 Segregation Housing Ordinance

“We did not move up there because we wished to force

  • ur way among the whites;

association with them in a social way would be just as distasteful to us as it would be to them. We merely desired to live in more commodious and comfortable quarters… As for property deteriorating

  • n account of our advent into

that neighborhood, I know it cannot be so, because all of us are paying higher rentals than the white occupants who immediately preceded us, and there is no better criterion of value than the rent a property brings.”

  • George W. McMechen,

quoted in NY Times, December 25, 1910

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8 Baltimore City Department of Planning

REGULATORY STRUCTURE - FEDERAL

1937 FHA Residential Security Map

First Grade Second Grade Third Grade Fourth Grade KEY

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PRIVATE DISCRIMINATORY ACTIONS

Restrictive Housing Covenants

9 Baltimore City Department of Planning

Illustration from Gardens, Houses and People, Vol. XII, No. 4, April 1937, published by The Roland Park Company.

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FIGHTING PRIVATE DISCRIMINATORY ACTIONS

Fighting Restrictive Housing Covenants

10 Baltimore City Department of Planning

1917 Ad in the Afro-American for Wilson Park.

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PRIVATE DISCRIMINATORY ACTIONS

Blockbusting

11 Baltimore City Department of Planning

“Would you panic if a Negro moved next door?,” Newberry Digital Exhibitions, accessed April 11, 2019, http://publications.newberry.org/digital_exhibitions/items/show/96.

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FIGHTING PRIVATE DISCRIMINATORY ACTIONS

Fighting Blockbusting

12 Baltimore City Department of Planning

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13 Baltimore City Department of Planning

REGULATORY STRUCTURE - LOCAL

1949 Zoning Map

First Commercial Second Commercial Industrial KEY

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REGULATORY STRUCTURE - FEDERAL

1940s Slum Clearance

14 Baltimore City Department of Planning

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BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Slum Clearance for Public Housing

15 Baltimore City Department of Planning

Perkins Homes. Source: Mark Steiner Show.

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REGULATORY STRUCTURE – FEDERAL AND LOCAL

Slum Clearance as Urban Renewal

16 Baltimore City Department of Planning

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17 Source: Baltimore City Department of Planning

REGULATORY STRUCTURE – FEDERAL, STATE, LOCAL

Citizens in South Baltimore stopped a highway through downtown and the waterfront...

Highways as Slum Clearance

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18 Baltimore City Department of Planning

REGULATORY STRUCTURE – FEDERAL, STATE, LOCAL

But the “Highway To Nowhere” went through the heart of West Baltimore Construction of I-170 destroyed 970 homes

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Urban Renewal, Human Renewal

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REGULATORY STRUCTURE

“The final stage [of urban blight] … is equivalent to the death of part of the city’s tissue. Human existence and economic activity in such areas become moribund. Subsequently, the affected locales become breeding places for crime, disease, pestilence, poverty and human despair. Transference of these ill-effects to other parts of the city is swift and deadly. “When this stage of physical degradation is reached, surgery or removal of slums constitutes only part of the cure for urban decay. Substandard social and economic circumstances of the people who live in such slums do not disappear when decayed slum structures are removed. Unless “human renewal” – improvement of the social and economic conditions of people – is achieved, the conditioning factors…are merely shifted to other areas…”

  • Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Agency

(BURHA) Community Renewal Program report, 1964

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ADDRESSING THE LEGACY OF DISCRIMINATORY TOOLS

Community-led Revitalization

20 Baltimore City Department of Planning

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Planning Academy 2019

21 Baltimore City Department of Planning

Discussion