ABSTRACT
On the surface, a whole lot has changed in Baltimore between the 1968 riots and the ones in 2015. In 1968, Baltimore was still a large and seemingly prosperous city with a healthy black and white middle class, but with little change and innovation. In 2015, Baltimore had extensive, attractive and shiny waterfront and downtown areas that could easily compete with the best cities in North America. The Baltimore renaissance of the 1970s and 1980s consisted in rediscovering its waterfront. As we shall see, some freeway destruction occurred inside underserved communities, further exacerbating the state of shock in which poorer communities remained after the 1968 riots. Certainly retail and commercial activity never fully returned to poor communities, no matter how dramatically the physical appearance of the city changed around the water. Away from the water, deeper in the city, economic erosion from massive population and job loss, combined with systemic racial inequality, continued.
