Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues.
Sometimes I imagine that the vicious territoriality residents of this or that place occasionally display when comparing their home enclave to another is a sign of something positive, a rootedness and sense of belonging, maybe, to the neighborhood or city or state one calls home. If that’s the case, then residents of the cities of Baltimore and Washington must be some rooted and belonging sons of bitches, because rarely does the vitriol fly more fiercely than when the relationship between the two is discussed.
Let me pause a moment, here, to establish my Baltimore bona fides (and try to inoculate myself from the comment flames to follow). My mother grew up in a West Baltimore suburb, inside I-695 and a stone’s throw from downtown, where my grandparents continued to live until I entered my 20s. I’ve seen the Os play in Memorial Stadium, and for much of my early life, Washington was just the monuments you saw from the Beltway as you skirted the city on your way north.
While I ultimately chose to settle in the District, I don’t have much time for shouting matches on either side of the argument. Both cities are over two centuries old. Both grew rapidly into the middle of the 20th century only to suffer depopulation to the suburbs and accompanying urban decay. Both sit at the center of large and growing metropolitan areas. Both center cities have, to varying degrees, enjoyed some revitalization. Both have long and rich histories, distinct cultural touchstones, a common argot, and so on. Both have, to a great extent, lost their relevance as distinct cities, surrounded as they are by miles of growing sprawl which tangles its way between Baltimore and Washington and Annapolis and Richmond and everywhere, laughing at things like jurisdictional boundaries.
Consider this: both Baltimore and Washington claim fewer than one million people, yet the Washington metropolitan area is home to over 5 million souls, the Baltimore metro area holds nearly 3 million, and in 2004, the combined metroplex crested the 8 million person mark. By the 2010 census, 9 million will be within reach.
Between 2000 and 2006, the Washington metro area added half a million people and the Baltimore area added over 100,000. Of those 100,000, however, nearly half settled in Howard and Anne Arundel Counties, which abut both Baltimore County (and, for Anne Arundel, a little bit of Baltimore City) and the Washington metro area. Of the workers who live in Howard and Anne Arundel Counties but work elsewhere, more commute to the Washington area than to the Baltimore area. While the centers of each metro area might feel fairly distinct, the economic regions they inhabit are meshing tighter and tighter between the two and expanding outward. Eventually, the Baltimore-Washington metroplex will eat all of the state of Maryland. It’s already much of the way there.
Against this background comes the modest ad campaign, mentioned here earlier this week, seeking to attract Washingtonians to Baltimore city, based primarily, it seems, on the lower cost of space. Despite the considerable overlap between the metro areas (MARC carries approximately 20,000 riders between the metro areas each day, and many more drive between the counties involved) the cities at the heart of the region don’t themselves exchange that many people. In 2000, according to Census worker flow files, only about 3,000 residents of Baltimore City traveled to the District to work, and fewer than 1,000 made the reverse journey. While the metro areas squish together, the respective poles stay apart.
Picture taken by The Skipping Hippy.
