Now that our fellow Americans have elected a new President  . . . 
We really have work to do! ​

​Bruce Katz wrote in The Metro Revolution that the federal government has been withdrawing support for cities for decades.  Well, it looks like we are in for at least four more years of eroding support for cities.  So we are on our own – we need to regroup following this election and roll up our sleeves.
 
We have yet to see what a President Trump has planned for cities, but those of us who are working to make our cities more livable need to be more organized than ever.  We have heard Donald Trump claim that he intends to “make America great again” – and we know that most of America's people, resources, challenges, and opportunities are in cities.  We the People live, work, worship, and play in Metro America!

Let’s be an active voice and movement to give substance and power to America's claim to greatness -- and let's hold our President and the entire Congress to that claim.  And let's hold our governors, state legislators, mayors, and city councils accountable --  This is not the time to cave in to discouragement!
 
Our cities of the laboratory of the Urban Century -- let's make cities livable for humanity and the planet!

 Baltimore -- and all the other cities in America -- we need to explore why no one wants to pay for public goods.  The kids and young adults who vandalized Baltimore on Monday night are a consequence of policy decisions we have made as a society ever since the Reagan administration:  People don't matter (unless they are affluent, able, and self-sufficient).  Now we see where that has taken us.  While this might not necessarily be a racist policy (to give them the benefit of the doubt), there is no question that this policy approach is disproportionately devastating to African-Americans and women who, collectively, constitute the majority of poor in this country -- most of them concentrated in cities because, again, we made the policy decision to warehouse poor people in cities.

As a society -- urbanites, suburbanites, red states, blue states -- we need to take responsibility for the way our policy decisions have shaped our cities. When will we start investing in ALL people, families, and communities? When will we start investing in programs and policies that foster human flourishing, resilient communities, and inclusive wealth creation for ALL?  

The teenagers who have acted out in violence are the result of family systems and neighborhoods we have produced.  We can do better.

This is the alleyway behind Attman's Deli in Baltimore.  For those of you who love the delicious eateries in neighborhoods around the Baltimore Harbor, you might also think about what happens to all the food waste from cooking and eating.  In urban neighborhoods, restaurant dumpsters are right next to someone else's back yard.  Try having a leisurely cup of coffee on your deck when rats are crawling around an open dumpster 20 feet away.  Not pretty --


But problems are opportunities wrapped in a challenge. This alleyway is an opportunity to think creatively about what the space in the middle of a block could be like -- functional and beautiful! Who says an alley has to be ugly, smelly, or boring?

One property owner on the block has done a great job renovating a building with beautiful space that is now ready for business -- but to make this space more attractive to new business owners, we need creative ideas about how this alleyway could be transformed into a shared space for people, cars, and dumpsters.  The middle of a mixed use urban block should be designed as much for an outdoor patio dining area in the back of a restaurant as for efficient management of traffic, parking, and garbage.  It should also be a welcome sight for residents looking out their back windows. 

What are your ideas?

Baltimore is famous for the attachment people feel to the places, character, and communities of its "Smalltimore" neighborhoods. The spectacularly successful Star Spangled Spectacular bicentennial celebration is a reminder of the historic legacy of Baltimore's old port village neighborhoods -- Jonestown, Fells Point, Federal Hill, Oldtown, Canton -- and perhaps imaging ways to recapture and refurbish their historic legacy as incubators of Baltimore's unique cultural legacy, funky vibe, and economic productivity.  Let's think about how a vivid sense of historic place enhances the social and economic value of cool, trendy rehabs and condos. 

While Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire remain sticky brand images, the old port villages are a far richer and intriguing window into the historic diversity and dynamism of Baltimore.  Old Jonestown, originally stretching up the east bank of the Jones Falls from the harbor to the (invisible underground) river bend, is now chopped up into distinct neighborhoods including Little Italy, Albemarle Square, Pleasant View Gardens, and Harbor East as well as "invisible" drive-through areas that everyone has seen, but no one knows. (Think of the one-way Pratt and Lombard corridors between President Street and Broadway: How many times have you driven on these streets?  How many times have you actually stopped or noticed who or what was there?)  Although some of the original historic footprint of streetscape and structures remains -- notably in Little Italy and a few scattered sites -- most of the old built environment was destroyed to make room for "new" neighborhoods. Admittedly, the redeveloped properties were not necessarily prize real estate or historic gems; few wax nostalgic for the Allied Chemical plant and most eagerly await the gleaming towers and greenspaces replacing it.  But even the newest neighborhoods can be enriched by their connection to Historic Old Jonestown, both as a source of community identity and pride as well as a destination for Baltimore visitors.

The bicentennial celebration reminds us of the the ongoing historic legacy of Baltimore's people, communities, places, and stories.  As important as Fort McHenry is, Historic Old Jonestown represents what the Fort was built to protect and preserve.  You can start with a visit to the Historic Jonestown website and spend an afternoon following the Heritage Walk that connects the remaining historic sites of Old Jonestown.  Whether your family has been in Baltimore since 1661 or just arrived in 2014, you are now part of its history and creating its future. 

Humans are creatures of place -- as much as we might travel, we can only be in one place at a time, and the quality, look, and feel of a place really matters!  City planners, developers, health professionals, employers, and economists are finding that it's not just our own property that matters to us; public places make a difference in how we feel about living, working, and playing in a city.  The term "placemaking" captures the dynamic sense of active involvement in creating the kinds of places where we love to be.

Whether we think about it or not, all of us are placemakers. In 2006, when the Project for Public Places asked people what they thought about placemaking, they got hundreds responses from all over the world.  IN 2010, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the US Conference of Mayors (USCM), and the American Architectural Association (AIA) launched a creative placemaking initiative as a key strategy for revitalizing American cities.

In the US Capital Cities Metroplex, stretching through Baltimore and Washington DC from Belair to Fredericksburg and Hagerstown to Annapolis and the Eastern Shore, over 10 million  people are placemaking in hundreds of neighborhoods in the fourth largest metro area in the US. In the two anchor cities, Baltimore and The District, placemaking is an active part of the urban livability agenda.

Cities across the country -- and the world -- are booming with social entrepreneurs.  Stretching from the Eastern Seaboard through the Rust Belt and to the Northwest, social innovators and entrepreneurs are changing the face and feel of cities.  

Urban social entrepreneurs share a passion for making their cities better for people -- whether they are techies, artists, or foodies, they want to combine livelihood with livability.

BALTIMORE CITY is a hotbed of social innovation -- Baltimore Social Enterprise, the Social Innovation Lab, Social Innovation Journal, and, of course, CityLab.  Video production libraries for film makers, community gardens for food deserts, maker spaces for inventors, and collaborative kitchens for foodies make Baltimore's eclectic collection of Downtown, Charles Street Corridor, and Harbor Waterfront neighborhoods a mecca for creative, enterprising people. 

One of the coolest new Baltimore social innovations is Section 1, Richard Best's public art park in Station North underneath the Jones Falls Expressway.

Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley call the dynamic transformation of cities a "Metro Revolution" that blurs jurisdictional boundaries between cities and suburbs. People and institutions in metro areas share broad economic, environmental, social, and infrastructure networks that define and shape lifestyles and livelihoods. 

Two-thirds of Americans live in one hundred metro areas on twelve percent of our land mass and generate 75% of US GDP. These metro areas are the economic and cultural engines of the US. 

• Are you a metro person?
  
• What does that mean to you?
• Do you envision a lifetime of metro living?
• How are you shaping the future of your metro area?