This mapping project was inspired by the 2017 zoning changes in Baltimore, Maryland. There have been maps provided by city agencies showing some of these changes, but I had a hard time finding one map that compared the new zoning changes with the previous zoning. Also, the new zoning is very complicated with many different subcategories.
New zoning maps do include other areas of interests like historical districts and designated business districts, but did not include the old zoning. Real estate development maps do show new projects, but without the new zoning.
There are three goals of this map. First is to group the new zoning data into simpler categories. Second is to compare the zoning changes, layered with current development projects, in a way that is easy to read and navigate. And third is to bring awareness that there is development, and a lot of it, happening in Baltimore, which is indicative of large, imminent forces of gentrification.
I also wanted to make complex and perhaps inaccessible data about zoning accessible to those who aren't involved in urban planning and similar disciplines, especially when the city makes decisions for a community who will be impacted by these decisions.
Data included in this map was accessed via Open Baltimore and via the maps created by the Mayor's Office of Information Technology. Data were modified by data cleaning and processing, using QGIS, Carto, Mapbox, and Glitch.
Grace Paik (pronounced paek; rhymes with ‘cake’) is a social scientist from the Washington DC metropolitan area. Her focus on the zoning changes in Baltimore arose from her preliminary research for her thesis project. Her thesis is about self-help practices in Baltimore communities, and about how comics and graphic novels can be media to talk about urbanism.