Greater Baltimore’s green infrastructure

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A recent short hike along the North Central Trail on a pleasant early spring day led me to consider the wonderful legacy of parks, trails, and other green spaces created by earlier generations for the benefit of this region. Starting at Monkton Station in north Baltimore County, it was possible to enjoy views of the Gunpowder Falls in the valley below.

The North Central Trail, renamed the Torrey C. Brown Rail Trail, was developed in 1984 from the railbed of train service once running between Baltimore, York and Harrisburg. Starting in Cockeysville, it extends 20 miles north to the Pennsylvania border and then another 20 miles in the Keystone State.

The Baltimore and Annapolis Trail, perhaps better known as the B&A Rail Trail, is another popular 13.3-mile paved walking and biking trail in Anne Arundel County. It follows the former route of the Baltimore & Annapolis Railroad, train service that once connected Annapolis to communities northward through Arnold, Severna Park, Millersville, Pasadena and ending in Glen Burnie near today’s Light Rail station.

Other trails in the region are found not along one-time railways but following some of the area’s notable waterways. Thus, we have the Jones Falls, Gwynns Falls and Herring Run Trails paralleling watercourses that are akin to “rails to trails–style” greenways. Together, they are integrated into the broader Baltimore Greenway vision, which was first delineated over a century ago.

It was in 1904 that the Olmsted Brothers (the successor firm to that of their famous father, Frederick Law Olmsted) presented their “Report Upon the Development of Public Grounds for Greater Baltimore.” It was their proposed master plan for a comprehensive, interconnected park and greenway system, rather than a narrow study of individual “public gardens.” This aligned with the goals of Baltimore’s Municipal Art Society and Park Board, which had commissioned the report, in the hopes of addressing the overcrowding, industrial pollution, and limited open space for the city’s expanding population.

The thrust of the report was that Baltimore needed a unified network of parks, parkways, and stream valley reserves to serve both public health needs and to guide urban growth. Thus, the greenways would connect with large regional parks, including Druid Hill, Patterson, Clifton and Carroll, as well as smaller neighborhood parks.

The Baltimore Greenway Trails Network is today seen as an extensive web of greenways knitting together the Gwynns Falls, Jones Falls, and Herring Run Trails into a city-wide loop. Other components include several unused or utility corridor alignments being converted to trails (e.g., the “Highlandtown Highline”).

The Baltimore Greenway Trails Network may be best described as a work-in-progress “vision” project, with about two-thirds of the routes already built and the rest advancing through design and community planning stages, while meeting the ever-present challenge of securing necessary funding. Of the nearly 70-mile network envisioned, about 30 miles are still in the proposed or planning stages.

Important additions to the network include the Middle Branch to Inner Harbor greenway, which is advancing through the design phase this spring, with plans to move toward full construction in the coming years. There is not a single completion date for the overall network, with new miles of trail added as the funding is secured.

Greenways and rail trails are not the only notable elements of our green legacy. In 1964, Wallace-McHarg Associates presented “The Plan for the Valleys,” a landmark work in environmental planning designed to preserve large swaths of open space in the Green Spring and Worthington Valleys of northwestern Baltimore County. Ian McHarg combined his detailed understanding of the local ecology, hydrology and topography with David Wallace’s skills in urban planning and design to guide where future development should take place and where to set aside other areas in order to protect the valleys’ landscape and rural character. More than half a century later, the plan has served the region well.

Although they were working decades apart, both the Olmsted Brothers and the Wallace-McHarg team shared the vision that urban and suburban development should be planned with close consideration of the natural world, with deep appreciation of landscapes, their valleys, their watersheds and their wooded areas. These are values that should be at the center of planning and development, in both cities and suburbs, in the 21st century.

Joe Nathanson is the retired principal of Urban Information Associates, a Baltimore-based economic and community development consulting firm. Since 2001, he has written a monthly column for The Daily Record and can be contacted at [email protected].