The Inner Harbor: What the World Can Learn From Baltimore

Baltimore doesn't fancy itself a global city. It's home to three World Series titles and a modest World Trade Center, but otherwise is more comfortable letting heavy hitters duke it out in global city rankings. However, Baltimore possesses at least one definite world-class asset: the Inner Harbor.

The old ships you tour with your cousins when they come to visit but otherwise avoid? The aquarium that you visited at least once a year on a school field trip until you had the place memorized? Those are the stuff of an urban planning revitalization effort that more than 30 years later is still offering lessons, whether conscious or unconscious, to cities around the world that are looking to do the same with their neglected ports.

Rio de Janeiro, Washington, Jacksonville, Buenos Aires, New York, Boston, London, Miami, and Philadelphia are all part of a diverse range of cities that have taken cues from Baltimore's Inner Harbor, considered the gold standard � for good or for ill � of urban waterfront revitalization. The lessons that Baltimore can impart cover a large swath of success stories in terms of anchor institutions, historic preservation, downtown neighborhoods, and waterfront access. There are also some kinks that still need to be worked out, however, from an overabundance of shopping malls to public transportation.

Lesson 1: Baltimore was � and remains, as best as it can � a port town.

No visitor to the city ever forgets that fact after promenading along a waterfront ringed by historic vessels and not choked off by highways. The Inner Harbor retains a rotating cast of seven vessels on a permanent basis, from a Coast Guard cutter to a World War II submarine to a Civil War sloop-of-war. The Clipper City, a replica Baltimore clipper ship, still sails regularly under charter as a reminder of the mid-19th century era when Baltimore's port competed with the best of the U.S. and the world.

Just 100 miles to the north, Philadelphia, another city with an active but fading port, hopes to capture a similar sentiment by opening up the waterfront � currently blocked by I-95 � and perhaps saving the SS United States. Currently you don't leave Philly thinking you were in a maritime town, yet the distance from the Port of Philadelphia to the Atlantic is about the same as from the Port of Baltimore.

Lesson 2: Big, popular sports and museum attractions reel in the crowds.

From Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium to the Maryland Science Center and National Aquarium, the Inner Harbor packs just the right mix of sports and education to keep a constant, and diverse, crowd rolling through from morning until well after dark. It takes guts to site a ballpark and a football stadium in downtown, but Baltimore pulled it off (although the south and west sides of M&T remain a parking lot and industrial no man's land).

In Rio de Janeiro, the City of Samba isn't quite a soccer stadium, but in a city where samba schools have competitive professional leagues, this massive facility for constructing Carnival floats and hosting large concerts has proved popular with tourists and samba aficionados alike, so much so that the mayor is planning a second one. Meanwhile, new art and science museums are planned nearby to help anchor the degraded port area (if you think the warehouses behind M&T look bad, check out Rio). All of this is part of the Marvelous Port initiative, a massive overhaul of the city's extremely rundown waterfront.

Lesson 3: People like to live and work near the action, especially when it's on the water.

The residential boom of Federal Hill, Fell's Point, Canton, South Baltimore, and Locust Point can be attributed to a lot of factors, but having a strong core in the Inner Harbor certainly helps, as the activity there spills over into nearby neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are valorized in the same way as Boston's North End, while the sleek new developments at Harbor East are exactly what happened in Buenos Aires' Puerto Madero. A master plan in the early 2000s sprouted skyscrapers and turned abandoned warehouses into some of the most expensive real estate in Latin America. London's Canary Wharf has created an entirely new business district, with residential options picking up as employees cut down on long commutes. Rio's neighborhoods of Sa�de and Gamboa are filled with beautiful colonial-era architecture waiting to be spruced up.

Caution 1: Ease back on the shopping malls.

Harborplace, inaugurated by the Rouse Company in 1980, started a pernicious trend of building "festival marketplaces" in historic locations. Throughout the 1980s, they followed the Baltimore model with Boston's Faneuil Hall, New York's South Street Seaport, Jacksonville Landing, and Miami's Bayside Marketplace. While the architecture usually isn't dreadful, and the idea of historic preservation is a positive impulse, the effect is to create cookie cutter interior environments, filled with the same chain stores. Independent retail is the key to a unique urban experience, which visitors don't find in the gleaming Filene's Basement or Best Buy, but do get a few blocks away in Fell's Point. Philadelphia's Old City, just a stone's throw from the waterfront, is likewise a bastion of interesting and eclectic boutiques.

Caution 2: Get more creative than the car.

While downtown is the convergence of Baltimore's meager public transportation system, you'd still be hard-pressed to find a lot of tourists, visitors, or suburbanites hopping on the Metro (light rail to Os games is an exception). Parking is still too easy and public transit still too stigmatized, though the Charm City Circulator is a case of Baltimore taking a cue from other cities (everywhere from D.C. to Oakland).

The answer is on the water, naturally. The water taxi and Harbor Connector are cute but hardly integral links to the city's waterfront. The ferries that ply Boston's waters are part of the famous T system and the National Harbor complex just downriver from D.C. is best reached by boat from Old Town Alexandria, though otherwise its an isolated mess.

The verdict is nevertheless clear: Baltimore's Inner Harbor remains a beacon for would-be waterfront makeovers everywhere by reminding us that just because global economics has largely taken the port out of the city, that doesn't mean you have to take the city out of the port.
 

Gregory Scruggs is a 2011 Fulbright scholar to Brazil studying urban planning in Rio de Janeiro.  He was born and raised in Columbia, Maryland.


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Photos:

- The Canton neighborhood of Baltimore - Photo by Arianne Teeple
- The Baltimore Aquarium - Photo by Arianne Teeple
- A sculpture of Babe Ruth at Camden Yards - Photo by Arianne Teeple
- The MTA light rail train in Baltimore - Photo by Arianne Teeple
- The Legg Mason building in the Harbor East neighborhood of Baltimore - Photo by Arianne Teeple
- The Port of Baltimore - Photo by Arianne Teeple
- The U.S.S. Constellation at the Inner Harbor - Photo by Arianne Teeple
- Colonial era buildings in Rio de Janeiro's Sa�de neighborhood - Photo by Greg Scruggs
- New high-rise development in downtown Rio's port area, taking a page out of Harbor East's playbook. - Photo by Greg Scruggs
- The Federal Hill neighborhood of Baltimore - Photo by Arianne Teeple