Some use psychology to explain and combat the City's shortcomings attesting Baltimore an inferiority complex and lack of self esteem. Or describe the issues in terms of family relations: Baltimore suffering from sibling rivalry with its much more famous sibling Washington DC which overshadows everything we do, even though DC was smaller than Baltimore as recently as , plus it is the younger sibling by nearly six decades. Of course, there are also social explanations such as systemic racism and the large social disparities it created.
In this space I will try to explain Baltimore's problems to turn around in terms of systems and feedback loops. Baltimore isn't a backwater where nothing happens. The City continues to generate large projects that are all described as "world class", "game changers" or as " the biggest in the nation ".
All those projects are supposed to, in one way or another, pull the city out of its spiral of shrinkage and crime. We will set aside for a moment the mounting evidence that building big stuff isn't necessarily the right solution for societal woes.
Physical projects alone won't do it anymore without having social components, such as community benefits agreements. In real estate there is much talk about impact investment and ESG.
Regardless, why do these project never "change the game" in Baltimore? Those cities are well beyond their tipping point and never looked back. The currently most widely known mega project is perhaps Port Covington "Baltimore's Port Covington to be the Silicon Valley of athletics wear", Archpaper , , which at one point even competed to attract Amazon's headquarters.
