Most people looking at the Baltimore street scene see only the wasted, litter-strewn space where rowhouses or other buildings used to be.
But some see opportunities to hang a tightrope, build a skate ramp or plant a tree. One person imagines towering waterfalls in the summer - and glaciers in the winter.
They have posted their sometimes outrageous ideas on a new Web site launched by the city to spark conversation about unused urban space. Called the Baltimore Infill Survey, the Flickr page has caught the attention of artists, architects and other creative-minded people - more than 50 of them - who have ideas about how to make the spots useful, productive and, especially, green.
Baltimore's Office of Promotion & the Arts put up the site in late January, along with a template image of an empty lot. The suggestions mostly involve parks and gardens, as well as buildings using sustainable materials. But they also include ideas for items such a fire pit.
"The idea for this has been percolating for years," said Gary Kachadourian, visual arts coordinator for the promotion and arts office. "If you live in Baltimore, or drive through, you might think, 'What should we be doing?' or 'What interesting things could happen?' This is a way to look at this as a positive instead of a negative."
The Infill Survey was not intended to lead directly to development of specific sites, though the city's housing department has logged about 30,000 abandoned structures and lots. The city owns nearly a third of them, and officials say they recognize that many are dilapidated - posing fire and safety hazards - and harmful to residents' quality of life. They have been taking steps to redevelop abandoned sites, or green and beautify them.
And some places have been improved by neighbors who work "guerrilla style," or without official permission, said Fred Scharmen, an architect for Ziger/Snead Architects in Baltimore, which contributed several ideas to the Flickr page. One Hampden woman, for example, has been known to look for parcels of soil at which to throw seed bombs, which are made from red clay powder, hummus and seeds for English thyme, white sweet clover and black-eyed Susans.
In general, Scharmen said, the recession has forced many architects and planners to think smaller and greener, and he said that suits these sites.
"This is a way to get people talking about what should happen with empty spaces," he said. "The default would be to fill in the sites with a building. But with many of the ideas, they're keeping the space."
Scharmen's image on the survey site is a wall of kudzu, an invasive and fast-growing vine: "It's cheap, easy and green," he said.
Organizers of the Infill Survey don't know of other cities around the nation or world with such sites. There is another site in Baltimore called BaltiMorphosis. which is not affiliated with any agency. It allows users to post their visions for an area in West Baltimore that was decimated by a transportation project dubbed "highway to nowhere." It was supposed to be a six-lane highway connecting interstates, but it was abandoned after fewer than two miles.
The Infill Survey, however, has attracted attention and images from people as far away as Serbia and Bolivia. Someone from Argentina suggested the tightrope.
One man took the city's template, which shows a fallen tree on an empty lot between two sets of rowhouses, and simply straightened the tree. Perhaps weary from Baltimore's multiple challenges, he wrote underneath: "Gotta start somewhere."
Randy M. Sovich, an architect for RM Sovich Architecture, used his experience in designing city projects to create an image of housing that incorporates outdoor and community space within the infill site, but also stretches over the vacant housing next door. He said the image is based on a thought from Einstein: creating order where there is disorder.
"If you leave decay on either side, that's not a solution," he said. "I know this in my heart because we've worked on projects over the years where we take down a vacant building, and we're looking at more vacant buildings. We're working against nature."
He also said that maybe the solution isn't more buildings but more forested land. John Ruppert, a sculptor and chairman of the art department at the University of Maryland, College Park, agrees. He suggested the glaciers and waterfalls, though he said he would understand if his vision doesn't become reality. He's fine as long as people are thinking about nature within the landscape.
"If we had a cold winter, there could be some system to make snow and create some kind of event, like at a ski resort," said Ruppert, who recently won a Baker Artist Award, in a largely online competition for Baltimore-area artists, and has work on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
"I like the idea of a rowhome and then a chunk of landscape."
More ideas
To see more ideas submitted to Baltimore Infill Survey's photostream or to add your own, visit flickr.com/photos/
baltimoreinfillsurvey
