Responsible Demolition: A Baltimore Case Study with National Implications

 Projects such as the one in East Baltimore that aim to redevelop blighted urban communities present a complex challenge that involves land acquisition, financing, relocation of dislocated residents and businesses, zoning, permitting, construction, leasing, and more.
 
These challenges become even more demanding when redevelopment officials commit themselves to treating residents of affected neighborhoods equitably—giving them a voice in the process, taking their concerns seriously and providing them with the additional support and assistance they need to emerge as beneficiaries of redevelopment.
 
Such projects inevitably lead to difficult and complex questions, but one aspect of the redevelopment  puzzle would seem straightforward: Whatever else it does, redevelopment should not expose neighborhood residents to physical health hazards, even as we acknowledge that redevelopment can also have negative psychological and other impacts on residents.
 
Yet, remarkably, no such consensus exists nationwide today. Despite clear-cut evidence that poorly supervised demolition can exacerbate lead contamination and other environmental health hazards in affected neighborhoods, few meaningful safety requirements are imposed on demolition practices employed nationwide.
 
In the East Baltimore Revitalization Initiative, community residents and local advocates have worked with the Casey Foundation and other project leaders to change that reality. This paper describes their efforts and details how they succeeded in instituting practices that sharply reduced the risk of adverse health consequences from the demolition of several hundred East Baltimore homes.
 
In addition, the paper describes how the responsible demolition protocols developed for the East Baltimore project are being adopted or studied in other jurisdictions, and it offers lessons from East Baltimore’s efforts on responsible demolition for policymakers, advocates and redevelopment professionals throughout the nation.
 
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