Two different cities

I was there and as in years past, it was normal for the 2015 Triple Crown race. Baltimore is two very different cities, particularly three weeks ago. They intersect at events like the Preakness or Orioles´ games at Camden Yards, but only briefly.

Compared with Lansing, the racial divide is stark, more pronounced even than the line of demarcation between Detroit and Grosse Point.

Having lived in Baltimore in the 1970s and ´80s and returning regularly, the transformation of the city or “cities” explains some of the frustration that lead to the rioting. One is shining; the other is crumbling. While the immediate cause of the riots was the abusive policing in black neighborhoods, the underlying issue is the ongoing collapse of communities: bad schools, unemployment, drugs, incarceration and the other social ills found in cities.

But what´s different in Baltimore, certainly when compared with a city like Detroit, is the wealth and success of glittering new neighborhoods adjacent to those of the poor. Detroit is attempting along Woodward Avenue the type of gentrification that supports high-income Millennial and GenX neighborhoods. But it´s a steep climb compared with Baltimore. The hole is deeper and its waterfront isn´t as open.

The disappearance of manufacturing jobs that once supported middle-class lifestyles and aspirations has been happening in the Northeast and Midwest cities for decades. I covered business for the Baltimore Evening Sun, a journalistically rich beat in a city that in ‘70s and ‘80s was a manufacturing powerhouse. There were really big businesses like Bethlehem Steel, whose massive Sparrows Point mills employed as many as 31,000. It also had a shipyard. General Motors build cars at its Broening Highway assembly line employing 7,000 UAW members. Western Electric manufactured cable — jobs for 4,000 workers. All have closed.

And there were smaller solid businesses manufacturing clothing, hats, umbrellas, brooms, food products and more. Also, gone.

It´s a familiar pattern in other cities, to be sure, but what has happened in Baltimore is in-your-face gentrification that is creating an Oz-like landscape of towering hotels, condos, apartments and entertainments along the city´s waterfront where companies like McCormick & Co. once manufactured spices or Proctor & Gamble produced Ivory soap.

U.S. Census tract income maps show the cavernous gap between adjacent neighborhoods. Along the waterfront, the 3,344-person neighborhood known as Fell’s Point in 2014 has an estimated median income of $94,814. There, 19 percent of the population is identified as minority. Directly north, just blocks away, is a similarly sized neighborhood that is 87 percent minority, where the median income is just $21,693. And Fell’s Point isn´t the waterfront wealthiest neighborhood. Directly adjacent is the once industrial Canton district where the median income is $155,920.

As an old, and once wealthy city, certainly Baltimore has it big-house neighborhoods. But it´s the new wealth, the obvious money and the proximity to poverty that is so jarring.

In Lansing, for example, there simply isn´t the same degree of high and lows. In the city, the neighborhood with the highest median income is the River Forest neighborhood on the west side north of the Grand River. The Census Bureau estimates the median income there at $78,953 and the minority population at 33 percent. To its north is the neighborhood directly south of the airport where the income is $33,782 and the minority population is 47. River Forest also abuts the long and narrow corridor that dips south along Larch and Cedar streets. But it is too gerrymandered to be a real neighborhood Lansing´s greatest income disparity is in the Moores River Drive neighborhoods where the 2014 estimated median income is $77,111 and the racial makeup is 44.5 percent minority. It abuts the Pleasant Grove neighborhood, 61 percent minority, where the annual income is $29,194. None of this is insignificant, but it´s not flaunted.

For Lansing, the small scale helps. Everything from traffic to services is more manageable. And the municipal decline is less pronounced. Baltimore is tumbling into the second tier of cities. Lansing, too, is slipping, but the population is more stable.

In 1960, with a population of 939,000, Baltimore was the nation´s sixth largest city. (Detroit, with 1.7 million people, was fifth). Baltimore dropped out of the top 10 in 1980 and currently has a population of about 620,000 – 26th in the nation according to the Census Bureau data gathered by biggestuscities.com. Its historical decline isn´t as wretched as Detroit´s, now ranked 18th with a population of 689,000. Still, Baltimore has 16,000 vacant houses.

As for Lansing, its population peaked in 1990 at 126,932. At the time, according to the website, it was the nation´s 145th largest city. Now the population is 113,972, but the ranking has plummeted to 236th. Growth is nice. But sustainability is better, and many indicators in mid-Michigan are positive. The auto industry is growing. So is MSU. Jackson National Life is expanding. Downtown Lansing is more vibrant and inviting than ever.

Lansing is avoiding the racial politics that are ready to explode again in Baltimore. Nothing has changed there. But there are always triggers, even in Lansing. Policing, housing, education and jobs can be flash points if they aren´t addressed, as events in Baltimore have demonstrated.