Community Redevelopment in Greenmount West

Abstract

This thesis explores strategies of community revitalization through means of developing public zones in the highly vacated Baltimore neighborhood of Greenmount West. The building of community facilities including an after-school recreation center, public market and community café will bring various groups of people together at street corners once ruled by drug trafficking. At the corner, residents will participate together in everyday activities and be watchful over these public zones. In addition to creating casual forums for community discourse and strengthening bonds between disenfranchised neighbors, a sense of regional and local identity is created through references to local folk art traditions and provisions for neighborly sidewalk loitering through repeated use of certain street furniture and canopy systems. Greenmount West will gain a recognizable identity within the local arts district as a sustainable mixed-income community with an encouraged spirit and cooperative attitude toward defending public spaces.