AS.001.219 · Baltimore as Classroom
In this course we reflect on what it means to think about progress in Baltimore — a city where the history of economic growth, exclusion, and ongoing change is never far from the surface.
Click a marker to learn about each site. Sites marked Class visit are part of planned course field trips and are not available for the Baltimore Video assignment. All other sites are available for groups to choose.
Note: This list of locations and their descriptions is preliminary and subject to change, including in response to feedback from local communities and organizations. Sites labeled "Class visit" are reserved for course field trips and are not available for the Baltimore Video assignment.
Inner Harbor. Baltimore's industrial revolution — canning, garment manufacture, printing. The BMI documents how ordinary workers built the modern economy.
Mount Vernon. One of the great encyclopedic art museums in the United States, built on a private collection donated to the city. Art, patronage, and the question of who gets to define cultural progress.
Baltimore area (TBC). A factory producing manufactured homes — a window into industrial production, housing affordability, and what it means to build progress at scale for ordinary people.
Fells Point. Abolition, Black entrepreneurship, and the history of labor rights. A site that asks who progress is for — and who has been excluded from it.
East Baltimore. Medical science as an engine of progress — and the contested history of how the campus was built and who it displaced.
East Baltimore. A biotech knowledge cluster built in one of Baltimore's most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Urban renewal, displacement, and the knowledge economy.
Dundalk / Seagirt Marine Terminal. Global trade and logistics — the material infrastructure of progress. Also a story of deindustrialization and re-skilling.
Central Branch, Cathedral Street. Public knowledge infrastructure. One of America's first free public library systems — and the politics of who got access.
West Baltimore. One of America's oldest continuously operating public markets. Urban markets, entrepreneurship, food systems, and neighborhood change.
Mount Royal Avenue. Creative economy and design innovation. How do art and design institutions shape what counts as progress?
From industrial waterfront to tourist destination. A case study in urban renewal, deindustrialization, and the politics of who a city is rebuilt for.
South Baltimore. One of the largest private urban development projects in American history. What does 21st-century urban progress look like?
West Baltimore. What happens when progress bypasses a community for generations? A neighborhood asking hard questions about disinvestment, policy failure, and agency.
Including Emergent BioSolutions. Pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturing. Vaccine production, public health infrastructure, and the limits of market-driven R&D.
For the Baltimore Progress Video assignment, your group (of two or three) will choose one of the available sites from the list above. No two groups may select the same site. Sites labeled "Class visit" are reserved for course field trips and are not available for the video assignment. The goal is not to produce a tourist video — it is to use the site as a lens for thinking rigorously about progress.
The best videos will find something surprising: a tension, a contradiction, an untold story, or an unexpected connection to the ideas we discuss in class. The site is a prompt for thinking, not a conclusion.
Groups and sites are confirmed in the first week of class. The video is due in Week 4 and screened in Week 5. The full assignment description is on the Assignments page.