In this lecture, I discuss housing policy in Baltimore, and the legacy of racism. Starting in the mid-1950s, the City of Baltimore embarked on an aggressive urban renewal programme that aimed to eradicate 65,000 substandard dwellings and rehabilitate 80,000 more (often homes to low-income African-Americans). While the programme enhanced the housing condition for disenfranchised communities that previously resided in slum and blighted areas, it provided little more than short-sighted solutions that effectively reinforced rather than counteracted the spatial pattern of residential apartheid in the city.
