Baltimore City - A City of Opportunity

Baltimore City - A City of Opportunity

Baltimore City is an amazing city.  In its history it has been nominated for being the Most Visibly Historic City in the United States, the largest city in the State of Maryland, the largest independent city in the United States and the 26^th most populous city in the country.  The City of Baltimore has more institutions of higher learning per capita than other cities in the country and has some of the best hospitals in the world. 

Baltimore is divided into 9 geographic regions:  Northern, Northeastern, Eastern, Southeastern, Southern, Southwestern, Western, Northwestern and Central and further into over 225 distinct neighborhoods within the city. 

Baltimore City has an extensive public transit system that includes the Maryland Transit Authority (MTA) bus, light rail and metro system and Charm City Circulator plus Amtrac and MARC trains. 

One of the things that surprised me about Baltimore when I first visited here was the amount of green space.  There are some parts of the city that are concrete, brick and glass but there are so many green spaces even in those areas.  Now there is a movement towards community gardens like the Whitelock Community Farm, a CSA.     

Baltimore City is said to own over 62,000 vacant and/or boarded up properties that they have acquired through eminent domain, unpaid taxes and other means.  The City of Baltimore has been implementing a program called “Vacants to Value” to encourage investment in city owned and vacant properties.  Not all properties in the Vacants to Value program require improvement, in fact, a few of the properties are in “move in” condition.   

In 2012 Baltimore saw it's first increase in population since 1950.  This is due in part to the affordability of homes in the City in comparison to the cost of renting and also due to the number of home ownership grant programs available to first time home buyers and repeat home buyers to encourage people to purchase in the City.

Stay tuned for more posts about some interesting neighborhoods in the City of Baltimore.