All the newfangled light bulbs, high-tech insulation, and single-stream recycling in the world can never stamp out the carbon footprint resulting from the plowing under of farm after farm and the further aftermath of this ultimate form of anti-green violence.
Developers seek a blank page, but that’s also available just outside of downtown - witness the staggering transformation of the area directly north of Johns Hopkins Hospital, under the direction of East Baltimore Development Inc. (EBDI), and the more-fabulous-by-the-minute Harbor East area. It will soon commence in Upton, with the rehabilitation of eighty decades-vacant rowhouses, and in the Oliver community, which touches EBDI’s northwestern boundary.
One developer friend referred to these large-scale rehabilitation and build from scratch projects as urban farming. I met plenty of developers, in my former job as the asset manager for the City of Baltimore's Department of Housing and Community Development, looking for opportunities to farm pieces of the city’s twelve thousand vacant buildings and lots (and there are thousands more under private ownership). When – not if – the scarcity of energy pushes and freezes the price of a gallon of gas north of five dollars, commuters fighting their way into the City of Baltimore, and armies of developers, will recognize that acres of abandonment are the next green pastures.
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