In 2013, the MIT’s Shrinking City Studio worked on a site in the neighborhood of Canton, Baltimore. The title of the studio, Baltimore Inversions, suggests the contradictions inherent to the city, which has shrunk in size and prestige even as its surrounding region grows. The city has consistently lost residents since the 1960s; today it retains less than 60% of its mid-century population. The condition has resulted in challenges to city budgets, public services, and crime, exacerbated social and physical fragmentation, and produced large numbers of vacant housing units. It has changed the perceived and lived reality of the city. The task of the design studio was to confront the specific needs of the site, a brownfield owned by a major energy company, while addressing the larger urban conditions of the city and region.
