ABSTRACT
In 2004 Baltimore recorded, at 41.8 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, the worst murder rate of any American city. 1 Moreover, this was merely the most shocking headline from the Maryland city’s unenviable portfolio of indicators of economic distress, social deprivation and community breakdown. 2 Between the censuses of 1950 and 2000 the city’s population fell from just under 950,000 to just over 650,000. More to the point, and unlike many other American cities, this trend of decline has actually accelerated in recent years. Thus the city recorded an 11.5 per cent loss in the 1990s, the worst rate amongst the largest American cities, and not far short of twice its own rate of decline in the previous decade. These same trends were reproduced in other characteristics – low educational attainment, family breakdown, housing abandonment, drug abuse and much else. In 1999, nearly a quarter of its population (22.9 per cent) fell below the poverty line. Behind all this (though certainly not the sole causal factor) lay a huge and continuing loss of jobs. This was overwhelmingly from the manufacturing and related industrial sectors which recorded a decline of 41.7 per cent between 1990 and 2002. 3 The performances of many types of services were similar with finance recording a 36.3 per cent job decline and retailing a fall of 47.3 per cent over the same period. There has been only very modest employment growth in other services to offset this grim picture.
