Downtown Baltimore. Maryland Department of Natural Resources photo.
There’s always been a reassuring belief that cities have built into them a cyclical rhythm to their lives. Cities come, they go. They prosper, they fade. Often they are reborn out of rubble where history and progress co-exist.
But ultimately it is people who make cities come alive – the whir of life, the rumble and drive of the temblors of commerce, the eclipse of darkness only to come awake again in the sunlit morning.
Baltimore appears to be the exception. It’s stuck in a rut.
It was a munificent gesture by Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to announce that he was reassigning more than 3,000 state employees to privately-owned office space in downtown Baltimore, now with a vacancy rate of 24%.
