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Regional Initiative (RI)
DRAFT PROPOSAL

The Baltimore/Washington Metropolitan Region is facing a major crisis that is widely known but rarely acted upon.  Decades of unmanaged and independent jurisdictional growth have exponentially degraded natural resources, infrastructure and overall quality of life.  The region has not grown as a whole but rather as a collection of disconnected parts. 

Baltimore & Washington are very similar to Rotterdam & Amsterdam in their size, distance, and city significance and yet worlds apart in their physical composition, connectivity and growth objectives.  Baltimore’s sister city, Rotterdam, is part of ‘Rijnmond,’ a collection of cities that participate in the planning process from a regional perspective first and a local perspective second. 

The Baltimore-Rotterdam Sister City Committee (BRSCC) can use the strong connections already established in the Netherlands in its efforts to raise awareness, develop an independent network study and lobby for a regional approach for the future growth of the Baltimore/Washington Metropolitan Region.

This Regional Initiative would be the first step in a lengthy but imperative process.

There are three distinct but interconnected phases to the RI program:

PHASE 1 - Awareness Excursion

Politicians, policy makers, activists, architects and planners travel to Rotterdam for three major reasons:

  1. Meet with counterparts abroad and understand how they set & accomplish planning objectives. 
  2. View case study examples of built work ranging in size from regional designs/implementation to free standing structures and understand the critical linkage.
  3. The most important reason is the awareness component that each individual will achieve at his or her own level (i.e. Why can’t we do this? I’ve never thought of it that way. Etc.).

PHASE 2 - Network Study

Engage Dutch architectural and urban planning firms, such as Office of Metropolitan Architecture and West 8, to study the connectivity and more importantly the dis-connectivity of the Baltimore/Washington region.  The analysis will explore issues such as transportation (mass & individual), workforce demands, future growth potentials, housing, environmental impact & protection, historic/farmland preservation, etc.  The possibility exists that there may be multiple designers selected to perform multiple parallel studies.  Multiple networks will be explored including the regional plan, housing typology modeling vs. private sector construction and governmental/policy organization.  The overall intent of the study is a marketing component to raise public awareness of the existing strengths of the region as well as the compounding problems.

PHASE 3 - Lobbying

The individuals that participated in Phase 1 will have returned from Rotterdam with a wealth of knowledge, contacts and experiences.  Phase 2 will provide an independent perspective of our regional situation.  Phase 3 provides the individuals the independent perspective from which sound opinions and policies will be introduced to the public, implemented into course of action, planned and ultimately created.  

For more information, contact the Baltimore-Rotterdam Sister City Committee.