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citymaus

@citymaus / citymaus.com

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Pedaling through the pandemic, Black Baltimore bike groups find freedom
When COVID-19 struck, the joyful rides of the Black People Ride Bikes group stopped for a few months. But since May, the Baltimore group has been getting people outside and helping them find the freedom in cycling. They are one of a few local Black biking groups attracting a large online following.
www.baltimoresun.com|Tatyana Turner

“Every weekend, a fleet of 30 cyclists zipped on their bikes through the streets of Baltimore, their front lights illuminating the pavement as the sun set, with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album booming out of mobile speakers. Onlookers cheered the party. Children ran up to the curbside, holding their hands out for high fives.

"Every now and then you get someone who wants to know the name of our group, and then we look at each other with a smirk, like to say, ‘Who wants to answer that?’” said Shaka Pitts, the co-founder of the Baltimore club. One of the cyclists would proudly shout out: “Black People!” And then, in a call-and-response that announced their title, the rest would answer: “Ride Bikes!”

When COVID-19 struck, their “SoulFood Saturday” rides came to a halt for a few months. But since May, the group Black People Ride Bikes has been getting people outside and socializing. The year-old team is also working on the bigger picture: encouraging newcomers, inspiring people who haven’t biked in years to climb back on—and sending the message that African Americans embrace recreational biking.

They are one of a few Black biking groups in the city that have been attracting large followings on social media, with African Americans in other cities and states joining in remotely and bonding over riding.

“A 2013 national study by The League of American Bicyclists and the Sierra Club showed that the fastest growth in bicycling is among African Americans and other people of color. But Baltimore bikers and advocates say there have long been barriers to cycling in the Black community. They point to a limited number of resources, such as bike shops in Black neighborhoods, as well as the city’s infrastructure, where protected bike lanes have tended to be in predominantly white neighborhoods. There’s also been a lack of representation. When club members watch the Tour de France, they say they only see a handful of Black cyclists, and an even smaller number of Black women. 

“Pitts and his co-founder, Nia Reed-Jones, wanted to change that. After meeting at a bike party in 2019, they decided to launch an advocacy group that would educate beginner and intermediate riders, with mentorship from more seasoned cyclists. They would teach the importance of using the bike as a way to improve physical and mental health.

But first they needed to overcome misconceptions, such as the idea that riding bikes is for children...”

read more: baltimoresun, 05.11.2020. 

#baltimore#black lives matter#bikes#cycling#bicycle#bicycles
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Summer in the City Is Hot, but Some Neighborhoods Suffer More
New research shows that summer temperatures can vary as much as 20 degrees across different parts of a city, with poor and minority neighborhoods often bearing the brunt.
www.nytimes.com

“Buildings and paved surfaces – like major roadways, uncovered parking lots and industrial zones – amplified heat, while large parks and other green spaces cooled down the surrounding areas. In cities like Baltimore and Washington, some of the hottest temperatures were recorded in dense residential neighborhoods with little tree cover and plenty of asphalt to absorb and radiate solar energy.

As climate change makes summers hotter, the health risks associated with these hyperlocal heat islands will grow.

“A conspicuous belt of high heat stretched east of downtown, across residential neighborhoods made up of dense row houses, typically with no yards and little tree cover. Average temperatures in this area, which is majority African American and largely lower-income, hovered between 98 and 99 degrees, with hot spots reaching as high as 102 degrees.

At the same time, average temperatures in the more affluent, tree-lined residential areas in the city’s north, as well as those surrounding Leakin Park to the west, stayed in the low 90s.

high heat: downtown baltimore.

cooler temperatures: franklintown, a historic neighborhood near leakin park.

“Baltimore is trying to ease the heat burden by planting more trees. The city plans to increase its tree canopy to cover 40% of the city, up from 28% in 2015, according to Lisa McNeilly, director of the Baltimore Office of Sustainability.

The city is also trying to turn some of its vacant lots into permanent green spaces. When abandoned or derelict homes are demolished, the land beneath them is sometimes used for parking. But by turning those lots into small parks, Ms. McNeilly said, Baltimore can increase the amount of vegetation and make neighborhoods cooler.

But those changes take time. Meanwhile, city officials are working to open more community cooling centers to give more people without air-conditioning a way escape the heat.”

read more: nytimes, 09.08.19. 

#research#mapping#maps#baltimore#Summer#heat#weather#land use#sustainability#urban greening
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anniekoh
The Baltimore Black Paper
Proposing that the people who live in Baltimore have more of a right to dictate what happens in it than the people who own Baltimore.
baltimoreblackpaper.com

This is so good.

How did cities respond to the social forces.

The first suite of policies was designed to attract a combination of desirable resident and consumer populations and desirable businesses. 
The second suite of policies attempted to deal with the disparity between the new economic footprint of the city and the underdeveloped skill sets  of the majority of residents within the city. This suite of policies involved transforming K-12 education in such a way that would theoretically make more of the city’s populations eligible for the type of “good jobs” citizens and their cities increasingly needed, and would at the same time further attract desirable middle-to-upper income families.
And the third suite of policies focused on policing and dealing with the population of people who no longer played an explicit role in the city’s economy.

They point out how Baltimore has poured money and personnel into policing.

The city has more police than it has in any other city agency. In fact, 50% more employees work in the police department than all the following agencies: health, housing, community development, parks and recreation, employment development, public libraries, head start, re-entry and homeless services.

Investing in segregation

In 1910, Baltimore was the first city to enact comprehensive racial zoning laws, designing residential blocks as White or Black based on the majority population. And while in 1917 the Supreme Court deemed this move unconstitutional, Baltimore elites went around their ruling by a combination of racially restrictive[2] covenants, biased enforcement of urban housing codes[3], segregated public housing, strategically locating public housing sites to reinforce segregation[4], the creation of local government segregation committees[5] and all-white civic improvement associations[6], real estate licensing regulations[7], zoning[8], and federal government sponsored risk categories that private and public actors used to determine which neighborhoods were eligible for mortgage loans (Pietila 2010; Rothstein 2015). This latter tactic gives us the term “redlining” used to refer to the process of marking neighborhoods red on the (President Roosevelt created) Federal Housing Administration’s Home Owners Loan Corporation’s (HOLC) map:
The neighborhoods colored red…evidenced ‘detrimental influences in a pronounced degree, undesirable population or an infiltration of it.’ Because of such trends, ‘some mortgage lenders may refuse to make loans in these neighborhoods and others will lend on a conservative basis.’ By redlining, HOLC said, ‘we do not mean to imply that good mortgages do not exist or cannot be made in the Third and Fourth grade areas, but we do think they should be made and serviced on a different basis than in the First and Second grade areas.’ A lasting stigma became attached to such areas. A two-tier lending industry was born. Banks served well-to-do white areas; blacks had to get their financing from speculators at harsh terms. (Pietila 2010, p. 70)
The FHA insured 60% of all homes purchased in the United States between 1930 and 1950 and during this period less than 2% of FHA loans were made to non-whites (Seitles 1998). The mortgages the FHA insured were one of the most democratic means of generating wealth in America as it gave working and middle class citizens the ability to grow wealth through home purchases. However, as these loans were racially exclusive, the FHA basically developed a white middle class at the expense of black poor and working class citizens (Katznelson 2005). Since blacks were precluded from participating in the housing “free market,” they were forced to purchase homes through contract sales, a particularly pernicious practice that forced blacks into contracts preventing them from owning the home they “purchased” until they paid off the entire amount. Further, it gave the person owning the contract the ability to take the home away from the contract purchaser if the purchaser missed even a single payment (Coates 2004). Because the decisions they made with regard to mortgage financing extended into the suburbs, the only suburbs open to blacks were suburbs that were already poor and predominantly black to begin with.
Less than ten years after the HOLC map was created, the United States went to war. Congress passed two pieces of legislation that also influenced segregation patterns in Baltimore and other major cities. The first was the GI Bill. The GI Bill promised military veterans free education, low-interest loans to start businesses, and low-cost mortgages. The second was the National Interstate Highway and Defense Act (1956), responsible for creating our nation’s freeway system.
#baltimore#housing#segregation#racism#land use
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baltimore’s “road to nowhere”, “a giant ditch that bisects West Baltimore neatly into north and south. Officially named State Route 40, it was originally intended to be a key part of a proposed east-west freeway presented as crucial to the city’s growth. This gigantic project upended hundreds of lives, transformed an entire landscape and cost tens of millions of dollars.”

recommended read: “roads to nowhere: how infrastructure built on american inequality.” guardian, 21.02.18. 

#baltimore#highway#freeways#roads#transportation#discrimination#racism#housing#neighborhoods#land use#america#black#people#inequality#urban planning#history
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reblogged
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sfmuniverse

The Market Street Railway had a Perfect November Saturday trainspotting along the Embarcardeo

We hear a gong and turn around and what should appear coming up the E-line tracks but the “brandest-newest” PCC to return from Brookville, Car 1063, honoring Baltimore Transit with that city’s original PCC livery of Alexandria Blue, orange, and gray.
It has just started its 1,000-mile “burn-in” to check all its systems before entering passenger service.

Prior to restoration, streetcar 1063 was painted in a later color scheme; a simple, solid yellow with white top.

Photo: Market Street Railway

#streetcar#muni#baltimore#transportation#san francisco#sf#vintage
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The next civil rights issue of our time
How transportation racially divides us, according to a new federal complaint in Baltimore.
www.washingtonpost.com

Earlier this year, Maryland's new Republican governor, Larry Hogan, canceled a long-planned new transit line across Baltimore, angering city officials and residents in the mostly-black urban neighborhoods that stood to gain from the new Red Line. What's more: Hogan announced that he would spend the state money instead on roads, highways and bridges outside Maryland's largest city.

That decision, civil rights groups said Monday in a complaint filed with the federal Department of Transportation, violated the Civil Rights Act. By nixing the transit project — particularly in favor of rural and suburban highway funding — the state will disproportionately harm African Americans, they allege. And, they add, the move follows a long history in which transportation decisions in Baltimore in particular have destroyed black neighborhoods, robbed their residents of job access, and helped cement inequality there.

"My hope is that with the filing of this complaint, people will understand that transportation is also a civil rights issue," says Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the LDF.

Transportation determines whether the unemployed can reach jobs. It affects how long workers must commute — and the time they lose with their families. It affects air quality and housing options and where children go to school.

"As much attention as we give to the trial of the officers who were charged in the killing of Freddie Gray," she says, "we should give to a decision that implicates 10,000 construction jobs and billions of infrastructure investment in Baltimore that were eliminated in a single day, by a single decision, made by a single person."

The particular transit line at issue would have crossed the city from east to west for 14 miles, connecting neighborhoods with high unemployment and low car ownership to jobs centers downtown and on the city's edge. Today, the city has just one existing light rail line running from north to south (along with one heavy-rail line), an anemic network relative to cities like Washington and Philadelphia.

read more: washpo, 22.12.15. photos: flickr/t55z, Mr.TinDC, southerncalifornian

“Empowering Maryland Through Transit” = Disempowering Already-Disadvantaged Populations By Not Providing Transit. 

#baltimore#black lives matter#transportation#policy#transit
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New York's Freddie Gray Protests. by vice photographer Pete Voelker, 30.04.15.

fuck police policing public space! 

**the baltimore riots ignited because the cops closed down MTA stations, blocked buses and traffic, preventing students from going home. fuck that shit! only people who should have that decision-making ability are transportation officials—definitely not the police! (same can be said for police policing mentally ill persons when mental health professionals are better suited for the situation.)

#police#nyc#baltimore#public space#protests#freddie gray
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Blighted Cities Prefer Razing to Rebuilding
www.nytimes.com

An abandoned block of Chase Street in Baltimore will be redeveloped by Johns Hopkins University.

Large-scale destruction is well known in Detroit, but it is also underway in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Buffalo and others at a total cost of more than $250 million. Officials are tearing down tens of thousands of vacant buildings, many habitable, as they seek to stimulate economic growth, reduce crime and blight, and increase environmental sustainability.
The continuing struggles of former manufacturing centers have fundamentally altered urban planning, traditionally a discipline based on growth and expansion.
Today, it is also about disinvestment patterns to help determine which depopulated neighborhoods are worth saving; what blocks should be torn down and rebuilt; and based on economic activity, transportation options, infrastructure and population density, where people might best be relocated. Some even focus on returning abandoned urban areas into forests and meadows.
“It’s like a whole new field,” said Margaret Dewar, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan, who helped plan for a land bank in Detroit to oversee that city’s vacant properties.

nytimes, 12.11.13.

#urban planning#detroit#baltimore#cleveland#cities#america#urban farming#urbanism
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