Four Million Commutes Reveal New U.S. 'Megaregions'

Re:Four Million Commutes Reveal New U.S. 'Megaregions' by tel on Monday December 05, 2016 @01:37AM (#13103768)

I don't know the details so this could just be hearsay, but one thing I've heard is that Baltimore has an unusually small taxable area due to a quirk in the voting requirments for annexation of outlying counties. Many rich areas exist outside of the city proper but the city can't take advantage of these resources.

Undoubtedly Baltimore has many immediate issues arising from racial tension, widespread poverty, and failure to rejuvenate industry at a scale necessary to recover from the manufacturing job implosion, but an underlying lack or resources could also be something of a stranglehold on the city.

Which is all quite sad because Baltimore has a lot of nice aspects and sees some wonderful new people largely driven by Hopkins... but I agree with you that everyone just seems to want to leave.

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Re:Four Million Commutes Reveal New U.S. 'Megaregions' by dionidium on Monday December 05, 2016 @02:14AM (#13103875)

Baltimore and St. Louis are independent cities. They are not part of their surrounding counties. And they're both pretty small, in relation to the urbanized areas surrounding them. This causes all sorts of problems (e.g. duplication of services) and makes other problems seem worse than they are, relative to other cities (e.g. homicide and poverty rates appear higher, because they don't account for affluent regions just outside of city limits).

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