Baltimore 2010 Census Results by Race

The 2010 Census results for Maryland are out, time to start the comparisons!

(data sources: QT-P5 data series for the 2000 census; P1-Race data series for 2010 census, note that if you follow the link you have to sort the table for Maryland counties)

Baltimore City lost population between 2000 and 2010. Not unexpected, although slightly worse than optimists (notably in city hall) expected. Overall Baltimore City is now home to 620,961 people, down 4.6% from 2000.

When that's broken down by race, here's how the changes from 2000 to 2010 look:

Now, replace an "i" with an "oun" and look what happens:
Interesting stuff. Baltimore County grew by 6.7% from a larger base, so the combined total population for Baltimore City + County increased. Interestingly, the proportion of census respondents listing their race as "White only" decreased in both Baltimore City and County! In fact, combining the two areas shows that "White only" has dropped from being a slim majority of respondents (54.6%) to a plurality (49.4%).

Looks like there are a lot of other interesting trends too. The more than doubling of "Some Other Race Only" as a response, the dramatic increase in respondents stating "Asian Only" in Baltimore County, and (of course) the huge increase in those claiming more than one racial heritage. Plenty more interesting data mining ahead.

In case you want to check out the data in tabular form:

Baltimore City Census Results
Race	2000	2010	Change
White alone	205,982	183,830	-10.8%
Black alone	418,951	395,781	-5.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	2,097	2,270	8.2%
Asian alone	9,985	14,548	45.7%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	222	274	23.4%
Some other race alone	4,363	11,303	159.1%
Two or more races	9,554	12,955	35.6%
Total:	651,154	620,961	-4.6%
Race	2000	2010
White alone	31.6%	29.6%
Black alone	64.3%	63.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	0.3%	0.4%
Asian alone	1.5%	2.3%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	0.0%	0.0%
Some other race alone	0.7%	1.8%
Two or more races	1.5%	2.1%
Baltimore County Census Results
Race	2000	2010	Change
White alone	561,132	520,185	-7.3%
Black alone	151,600	209,738	38.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	4,616	2,625	-43.1%
Asian alone	26,912	40,077	48.9%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	242	319	31.8%
Some other race alone	4,685	12,801	173.2%
Two or more races	5,105	19,284	277.7%
Total:	754,292	805,029	6.7%
Race	2000	2010
White alone	74.4%	64.6%
Black alone	20.1%	26.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	0.6%	0.3%
Asian alone	3.6%	5.0%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	0.0%	0.0%
Some other race alone	0.6%	1.6%
Two or more races	0.7%	2.4%
Baltimore City + County Totals
Race	2000	2010	Change
White alone	767,114	704,015	-8.2%
Black alone	570,551	605,519	6.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	6,713	4,895	-27.1%
Asian alone	36,897	54,625	48.0%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	464	593	27.8%
Some other race alone	9,048	24,104	166.4%
Two or more races	14,659	32,239	119.9%
Total:	1,405,446	1,425,990	1.5%
Race	2000	2010
White alone	54.6%	49.4%
Black alone	40.6%	42.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone	0.5%	0.3%
Asian alone	2.6%	3.8%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander alone	0.0%	0.0%
Some other race alone	0.6%	1.7%
Two or more races	1.0%	2.3%

I'm Still a Nerd

Long ago, when I was new to blogging, I commented that I was a huge nerd because I decided to plot my car mileage vs time. I never stopped being that nerd, now I just have a much larger sample size.


My car mileage is still fairly linear, but you can see that there has been a slight change in the slope over the last couple years. (You can also see that I got really bad about getting my car in for regularly scheduled oil changes in the late 2008, early 2009 timeframe, but let's not focus on that.)

Looking back at the data, I can see that between January 2005 and January 2008 I drove approximately 44,000 miles. Admittedly, I did drive a huge road-trip one Christmas (nearly 4,000 miles in less than two weeks), but that's still averaging just under 15,000 miles per year. Over the more recent 3-year period (January 2008 to January 2011), I drove only ~35,000 miles. The funny thing is, I've actually increased my commute distance by a couple miles per day since June 2008. How am I driving less?

I think the big change is that in June 2008 I moved close a train station that allowed me to occasionally take commuter rail to work instead of drive. Nowadays I can also take the light rail or bike to the train station. I have also, over the last few years, become a big fan of new urbanism, walkable neighborhoods, and public transit (I've always been a fan of biking places if possible). Also, more recently, I've moved in with my girlfriend and now make her drive me places sometimes because car pooling is more efficient or I'm planning to drink alcohol (or I'm feeling lazy and talk her into driving). Also, this last fall I had a problem with a bent wheel that I procrastinated on fixing because I didn't want to pay all the money since I knew I needed tires anyway.

All of this combined means that I drove around 11,300 miles in calendar year 2010. That's about 2,400 less than I drove the first 12 months I owned my car!

Finally, in what is definitely a miracle of Honda engineering, my car continues to get around 30-32 mpg on average. So by those numbers, I'm saving myself 75 gallons a year which was probably worth between $150 and $225!

Finally, in a particularly ironic turn of events, in my 2007 blog post on my driving I was pissed off to learn how much of my gasoline costs went to taxes. Now, in 2011, I've educated myself a lot more about transportation funding/policy and I've seen some income growth while inflation has been nearly non-existent. As a result, I'm now a huge fan of raising taxes on gasoline in Maryland (since the gasoline tax is not indexed to inflation and has not been increased since 1992), especially if its used to fund effective public transportation, bicycle transit improvements, or improve run-off control from existing highways.

---

By the way, the latter part of the last decade was actually a period of time in which the US was becoming less car dependent. Some group called The Center for Clean Air Policy released a study that included a chart showing that from 1960 into the mid-90's GDP growth and growth in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tracked each other almost exactly. But around 1995, the two started to diverge, with GDP growth outpacing the growth in VMT. Very, very encouraging news! Good blog post with commentary from the New York Times.

Baltimore Murder Charts - Year End 2010 Edition

I haven't been the best at updating my blog recently, but one of the few original things I post regularly are charts covering Baltimore murders. My sources remain Murder Ink from the City Paper and the Baltimore Crime blog.

Murder trends for 2010 were not nearly as exciting as 2009. Murders declined again, but not by a large number. Most of 2010 looked like 2009, the main exception being that there were far fewer deaths classified as homicides due to prior year murders. As I've been doing, any homicides classified due to an act in a prior year are counted in that prior year (by going back and editing data). So using this methodology I get slightly different numbers than the official tally, but I think it's better for tracking trends.

In 2009 there were officially 238 murders in Baltimore, but 14 of them were due to acts of violence from prior years, so I count that as 224 murders. In 2010 there were officially 223 murders in Baltimore, but 4 of them were due to acts of violence in prior years (none of them from 2009 though, so no upward modification). So while the official numbers drop from 238 to 223 (a 6.3% decrease), my count drops from 224 to 219 (a 2.2% decrease).

Still, we've come a long way since 2007. The 2010 total is down 20% from 2007. The improvements are pretty obvious when you look at the homicides by month and the cumulative plot of homicides for the last four years.



In fact, 2007 was such a higher total than 2008-10, it's actually better to remove it to compare the more recent years.


So what do we have? Looks mostly like stability. Sure, from 2008 to 2010 there were about 14 fewer homicides in Baltimore, a total of a 6% decrease. Not terribly impressive, even if murders continue decreasing at this rate we'll have to wait until 2017 to see murders become something that happens only every other day. That's not a terribly cheerful prediction. Hopefully the continued focus on reducing illegal guns in the city will continue to lower shootings and homicide rate will drop faster.

It needs to. Baltimore's per capita murder rate remains one of the worst in the country. At 35 per 100,000 (my math based on 223 official murders and U.S. Census estimated population for 2009). However, if you are African-American in Baltimore the per-capita murder rate is unbelievable. According to Anna Ditkoff of Murder Ink, 90.6% of 2010's murder victims were African-American. Based on Baltimore's demographics, this indicates that African-Americans in Baltimore face a 50 per 100,000 per capita murder rate while residents of other races experience a 9 per 100,000 per capita murder rate. To put that in perspective, residents who are not African-American are safer in Baltimore than the average Albuquerque resident (source: Wikipedia article on crime in US cities).

Finally, my favorite chart that I create for tracking murder trends:


Vertical axis magnified:

Links to previous year's homicide summaries:
2009 Year End Summary
2008 Year End Summary

Christmas Shopping Strategy

When making Christmas shopping plans, it's best to start by systematizing your thinking.

New Neighborhood, Same Hobby

So I've moved to yet another Baltimore neighborhood, but like many urban neighborhoods I get frustrated by the litter I see when I walk around. Took a couple hours this afternoon and walked up and down the street picking up litter.

Results:

Given that my new neighborhood is a lot nicer than my old one it took a lot longer to pick up this much garbage. I did learn a few things about my neighborhood's litter patterns. Looks like a lot of the litter is due to single serving or individually wrapped junk food and discarded student bus passes. As you move farther from the middle/high school, the litter transitions to discarded take-out remnants and convenience store garbage. Litter peaked near the intersection with the main thoroughfare, likely because this is where vehicular douchebags have the most time to litter.

Overall, a much more pleasant experience than picking up garbage in my old neighborhood, where the overgrown city-owned property could fill up a garbage bag in 10 yards of deep cleaning. The only real problem I'm going to have is when my girlfriend gets home and discovered that our garbage can is completely full and we can't empty our own kitchen garbage can until Wednesday morning...

I actually believe that the biggest problem is that this is a long, well-travelled block with no public garbage receptacles. I'll have to see if I can call the city and have one put up. I think that the majority of litter is a crime of inopportunity - a combination of lots of foot traffic, single-serve junk food, and no garbage cans.

Admittedly, this is a pretty weak blog post, but after months of inactivity it's time to get back to writing about things that seem interesting.

Good News for Passenger Rail

I saw some really good news today, Amtrak believes that they're in for their busiest year ever in FY10! (previous record was set in FY08). What's interesting was that even in the depths of the worst recession in ages, it turns out that Amtrak scored it's 2nd-best ridership year in FY09 (Amtrak reports all of it's stats by government financial year, so FY09 was October 2008 to September 2009, so it really encompassed the financial crisis).

Last September I grabbed some data on Amtrak ridership in Maryland. Turns out that Amtrak still had old state fact sheets hosted on their website, just no links (found this out using Google), so I was able to pull up data all the way back to FY03. I've just added in the data for FY09 and thought I'd publish the data here (keep in mind that this is ridership data; where ridership = boardings + alightings, so if you buy a round-trip ticket you get counted twice):

Baltimore and BWI Rail Station dominate Maryland Station usage, but there is a sizable contingent from New Carrolton and a non-negligible usage at Aberdeen. Overall, the ridership grew by 6.2% at Maryland stations, but the individual station usage is more noisy. Ranging from Rockville's 70.58% increase to New Carrollton's -21.7%. I'd guess that changes in service patterns probably explain a lot of changes in New Carrollton, but I don't follow rail travel closely enough to know. It is really interesting that the two least used stations (Cumberland and Rockville) saw ~70% increases and both saw increased usage in FY09 vs FY08.

Another thing that you have to consider is that many, many people who technically live in Maryland use Union Station as their Amtrak station (it is the 2nd most used Amtrak station in the country). So I also took a look at how all the Maryland stations stacked up against Union Station:

Union Station saw a drop from FY08 to FY09, but certainly not as much as Maryland. I imagine this has something to do with the fact that Marylanders could drive or car pool instead of taking the train but people in DC don't own cars. Or maybe it reflects all the bank executives that had to take the train to DC for bail-outs.

Even though travel to-from Union Station dwarfs travel to-from Maryland stations, there just aren't many states that use Amtrak as much as Maryland. Nearby stations in the top 25:

#2 - Union Station (4,278,930)

#8 - Baltimore (932,827)

#11 - Wilmington, DE (664,429)

#16 - BWI Rail Station (617,349)

Interestingly enough, if you increase the geographical area to include nearby parts of Pennsylvania, you'd pick up the #3, #20, and #22 rail stations (Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Lancaster respectively). For reasons I can not fathom, Pittsburgh gets fewer passengers than New Carrollton.

Overall, as a fan of train travel, I think a healthy passenger rail system would be a great thing for this country to develop (and I believe we're taking steps in that direction) so increased ridership is great news. Perhaps someday Amtrak will even make money outside of the Northeast Corridor!

Anyway, there's a ton of interesting info available from the Amtrak Information and Facts website. Basically you can look up total ridership statistics from any Amtrak station in the country and marvel at the fact that more people use the Aberdeen Amtrak station in FY09 than use Amtrak at all in Kansas, Utah, or West Virginia. Or learn that less than 5,600 people used the single Amtrak station in Idaho.

In case you're a big nerd like me, here's the raw data on Maryland total ridership:

	Aberdeen	Baltimore	BWI	Cumberland	New Carrollton	Rockville
FY03	40,658	855,675	541,438	6,831	229,101	1,961
FY04	43,755	918,624	590,610	6,919	216,579	2,654
FY05	48,047	980,122	578,554	7,839	218,184	2,554
FY06	37,414	910,523	561,505	9,100	206,830	2,984
FY07	38,702	977,379	587,845	9,182	204,008	2,905
FY08	45,052	1,020,304	644,640	11,257	203,449	3,178
FY09	44,495	923,827	617,349	11,484	179,344	3,345
Increase, FY03 to FY08	10.81%	19.24%	19.06%	64.79%	-11.20%	62.06%
Increase, FY03 to FY09	9.44%	7.96%	14.02%	68.12%	-21.72%	70.58%
	MD Total	DC
FY03	1,675,664	3,570,920
FY04	1,779,141	3,744,710
FY05	1,835,300	3,734,287
FY06	1,728,356	3,859,117
FY07	1,820,021	4,108,569
FY08	1,927,880	4,489,955
FY09	1,779,844	4,278,930
Increase, FY03 to FY08	15.05%	25.74%
Increase, FY03 to FY09	6.22%	19.83%

Good Ideas for Cycling Laws

The Greater Greater Washington blog is a great resource for people interested in increasing the availability and safety of alternate forms of transportation. Today they have a really good post on 12 Ways Our Region Could Reform Bicycling Laws. If you're even a casual cyclist in Maryland, you should read this article. I know that since I've been reading that blog I've learned that not only are the roads less safe for cyclists than I thought, but that generally cyclists don't have much of a legal leg to stand on in Maryland if they do get injured (or even killed!) by a car.

Baltimore 2009 Homicides - Everyone CALM DOWN

So the opinion in this town seems to be that Baltimore had 238 homicides in 2009 compared to an official 234 in 2008. Nationally homicides decreased in 2009. DC was way down this year. Quick, everyone panic!!

Bulls&%*.

In 2009 we had 14 prior year homicides. That means that 224 people died of injuries sustained in violent incidents in the city of Baltimore in 2009. 4 of those 14 prior year assaults occurred in 2008. Baltimore logged around 140 fewer non-fatal shootings in 2009 than 2008. As much as critics and "The Wire" fans would hate to admit, the homicide rate is lower and this city is safer than it has been in a generation.

The Baltimore Sun ran a very good series of graphics on what homicides and shootings looked like in 2009. The Sun shows that in 2009 there were around 450 non-fatal shooting in the city. While you might be like "DAMN!", if you look at the graphic you'd realize that only 2 years ago there were 652 non-fatal shootings. That's an incredible drop over a period of only 2 years. This whole "fight against bad guys with guys" that Bealefield is always on about seems to be making a difference. Frankly, given the level of non-fatal shootings, I'm shocked we managed to make it up to 238 for the year.

Actually, that's where homicides due to prior year assaults comes in. As I stated in the intro, Baltimore racked up 14 CY2009 homicides from prior year assaults. That's a lot. Per my research of the Murder Ink archives, we had 5 prior year homicides in '07 and 6 in '08. 14 is a big deal and it skews the real measure of how deadly the city was last year. In 2007, when the city record an official 282 homicides, 5 were a result of prior year result, which is about 1.8% of homicides. In 2009, we have 238 official homicides and 14 prior year assaults, which is 5.9% of homicides.

What this calls out for, no, cries out for, is someone to track homicides based on the date of the assault! Thankfully, I am willing to do this. I've carefully researched Anna Ditkoff's Murder Ink and the BaltimoreCrime blog posts. I've spent time auditing my numbers. Lots of time. My girlfriend has been frustrated by the time I've spent on this. But I've got your answer.

Discounting prior-year assaults, there were 279 murders in 2007, 232 murders in 2008, and 224 murders in 2009 as of the first week of January, 2010.

"But," you might say, "I don't understand! You said there were 282 murders in 2007 with 5 as prior-year assaults, so why is your total 279?" The answer is that I'm keeping a master spreadsheet. So if someone died in 2009 due to an attack in 2007, I go back and add the murder to the date in 2007 when the victim was attacked.

This master spreadsheet allows me to track a number that I call "Trailing Twelve Months Homicides". This statistic does not appear to be tracked anywhere else, but I think it matters. Restarting the homicide count every January doesn't show you how you're really doing. If you start counting every January, by March you're comparing 33 murders to 30 and coming up with a 10% increase in homicides when really it was just a couple bad weekends. There aren't a lot of homicides, really, so the data is really noisy and needs to be considered over at least a 12-month time period. So I think that Trailing Twelve Month Murders really makes sense.

So, without further ado, here's the plot of Trailing Twelve Month Murders from January 1st 2008 to approximately the present:

(Click on the chart above if you want to a better view of it, Blogger doesn't do a real good job with graphics sometimes)

Anyway, look at that graph for a minute. It shows that two short years ago the Baltimore murder rate was around 275 for the past 12 months. Today it's sitting much closer to 225. Back in mid-2008 we dipped below 215 per 12-month period before jumping back up to around 230. Most of '09 held steady around 230 (the 30-day moving average never got close to 250 for all of 2009). During the fourth quarter of 2009 the murder rate started slowly sliding downward. By the end of the year Baltimore was doing better than we had since 2008.

Why didn't you know this already? Because around Thanksgiving the ME's office started owning up to all the people that died this year who should be classified as homicides but were actually assaulted in a previous year. Ok, maybe it wasn't the ME's office. I actually have no idea who actually "owns up" to those statistics, but the point is that it hit us hard in December. Between Thanksgiving and the end of the year we added 8 prior-year assaults to the '09 homicide tally. So right as everyone started paying attention to the annual total, it jumped for an external reason. Prior-year homicides took December from a total of 19 homicides (about average for 2009) to 25 (a pretty bad month for 2008-09).

So the moral of this story is that Baltimore is on the right track. We're holding steady against last year (the best year for homicides in two decades) and even if we hold steady on new attacks, we're likely to drop the total. Non-fatal shootings are basically the feeder statistic for prior-year assault homicides and those have been declining, so I'd expect fewer of those next year.

Anyway, I may well dig up some more statistics about murders, but let me end this post with a prediction: I predict that 2010 will have no more than 215 homicides. When you add in the prior-year assaults, I'll take 220 as an upper bound for the official homicide tally in 2010.

Summary graphs for the year:

Finally, for the big nerds out there, here's the summary of homicides resulting from prior year assaults:

2007 - 5 (1991, 1997, 2x 1999, 2005)
2008 - 6 (1985, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2006, 2007)
2009 - 14 (1988, 1994, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 4x 2008)

Also, here's a link to my static XML murder charts.

How can we set Baltimore apart from other cities?

Recently I've been thinking about quality of life in the city of Baltimore. Cynical people everywhere will assume that I am referring to how terrible it is, but I've actually been thinking about how it's been improving. I've been reading The Economist's special holiday double issue and they have a really depressing article on the city of Detroit and how it's basically disappearing back into the prairie from whence it came. It sounds terrible and depressing, but I can only imagine how depressing the city of Baltimore must have seemed circa 1994. I can only imagine because I didn't move here until 2000 and didn't really pay attention to the city until maybe 2005 or so. I've really only caught Baltimore on the upswing.

Baltimore is certainly not a world-renowned city, we are often overlooked for DC even in regional situations, but we've got a lot going for us. The Baltimore-Washington MSA is highly suburban and increasingly the suburbs are actually more expensive that the city (so there is actually reverse pressure on those who want a cheap house). Murders are down, even though 2009 will finish on par or slightly above 2008. Crime is down overall and although our mayor has been convicted of some crappy little crimes and is likely to be removed from office, I think we should see the bright side of this. Our mayor was convicted of SMALL crimes and will be removed from office. Cynics can say "well, that's all they were able to prove" - true, but it does send a bit of a message to all elected and appointed officials: "The mayor is going down over <$700 in gift cards, I'd better steer clear of gifts from developers this year." It's not much of a silver lining, but it shows that no one is above the law.

Anyway, on to improving quality of life. The Economist also had an article on America and why it's freaking awesome. Or something like that, because The Economist has a huge crush on America and the American way of life. The subtitle of the article was "The greatest strength of America is that people want to live." In the article they go on about how you can very much choose the life you want to live in the US. But it was this quote from the article that got me thinking:

If you like low taxes and the death penalty, try Texas. For good public schools and subsidised cycle paths, try Portland, Oregon. Even within states, the rules vary widely. Bath County, Kentucky is dry. Next-door Bourbon County, as the name implies, is not.

What is the quality of life factor that distinguishes Baltimore from other cities in the United States (much less the world)? There's what we're actually famous for (The Wire, eating crabs), what city government wishes we were famous for (the Inner Harbor, Harbor East, crime reduction, redevelopment successes), but what about the Baltimore way of life is really different?

For now, I'd say it's fairly typical urban, east-coast lifestyle without the cost. City school teachers can afford to access most of this city, afford to buy a reasonable home, etc (I know because I have a lot of friends who are or have been city school teachers - tough job, but reasonably well-paying for new graduates). But you can't effectively push that idea into the mainstream. People will instead point to the fact that there's no subway system like DC or New York. That crime is still too high. That the city government is corrupt.

We're a poor city, let's face it. We're making progress at green initiatives, but other cities are doing that too. The Circulator bus system is almost running (finally) and will provide great transit alternatives and the Red Line is looking like it might actually happen, but other, richer cities will always be ahead of us on transit. What we need is something that is not too expensive, does not rely on outsiders, and gives this city a sense of pride.

As you might have guessed, I've got an idea.

I think that Baltimore should start an amateur athletics league for the city. I would model it after Ireland's Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), but maybe will a little less Irish nationalism. Basically the idea is that every little town in Ireland fields a team in Gaelic football and hurling (also Ladies' Gaelic football and Camogie). They play a regular season against other towns. What's great about this is that these are amateur athletes who live in the towns or counties that they're representing. What's crazy is just how successful this has been in Ireland - the number 1 and 2 sports by attendance are Gaelic football and hurling (per wikipedia)! The matches are covered in all the local papers and followed much the same way we follow college or professional sports in the US.

What if we founded something similar in Baltimore? This is a first cut idea, but what if we founded an amateur athletic league for adults with strict residency rules and played matches around the city? I'd set the boundaries as the city council districts because there are 14 of them and they are roughly in line with neighborhood boundaries. I'd say we start with popular, low-cost of entry sports that are popular with both genders and that would allow a lot of amateurs to try out. Here's what I'd start with:

1. Basketball - it's a no-brainer; most of the facilities needed already exist, a city-wide championship tournament would be pretty awesome
2. Soccer - low cost of entry, fairly popular, would get the yuppie's involved
3. Softball/Baseball - again, we already have most of the infrastructure available and it has a different traditional season from the other two

I'd say keep the rules simple:

• Must be 18 or older (to sign the legal release)
• Must be a Baltimore resident (BGE bill in your name at an address is good enough for the MVA then it's good enough for this league)
• Can not be a current or former professional athlete
• If you move to a new district, you can finish out the season on your old team or wait until next year to play
• Volunteer coaches get a guaranteed term of 2 years and are selected by city council person (this would definitely encourage interest in local politics)
• Open try-outs before each season (verify residency at try-outs)
• Players provide their own practice equipment, but districts can raise money to buy practice equipment
• City pays for referees and donates gym space for games (ideally we could get local colleges to donate gym space for championships, imagine the championship game held in Coppin State's new athletic center)
• Conviction on any drug crime means you must forfeit two seasons of all sports
• Lifetime ban for conviction of any handgun-related crime

If this works out, and I think that it might, you could expand to other sports with revenue generated from these sports (that's right, I think that this could have positive cash flow after a couple years). If you keep the cost inputs low (i.e. players pay for their practice equipment) and are able to get some sponsors for the championships and charge a dollar or two at the door, you could eventually afford to pay for more gym/field space and more referees for other sports. Eventually you could perhaps subsidize the cost of equipment for very costly (but popular) sports such as football or lacrosse. There's just no way you could ask players to front the cost of their football pads and expect east or west baltimore to be able to field safely-equipped teams.

Any extra revenue generated by these leagues should go towards the capital improvement budget of the Department of Parks and Recreation. The more popular that you make the amateur sports, the better the facilities around the city for children and adults to play sports.

I think you would also get a lot more of a city-wide sense of community. I bet the district 10 (Federal Hill) vs district 1 (Fells Point/Canton) soccer match-up would be a big draw. Probably the same for any east-side district versus west-side district in basketball. Better yet, the Fells Point/Canton team traveling to district 9 (solidly westside Baltimore) for a basketball game. Would the Hopkins undergrads be able to make the district 14 team or would they be unable to compete with home-grown talent?

Another thing that you could do with this is try to increase general health and athleticism. What if you added "Cross Country" to the sports and allowed each district to field a team of 100? Hold massive, city-wide 5k races every other week for a couple months leading up to the Baltimore Marathon?

Expansion plans:

• Start with men and women's divisions of the three sports listed. Seasons would not overlap.
• Do not need a junior division (we already have high school sports)
• Add a "master's" division to popular sports
• For very popular sports (such as basketball), consider expanding to a "junior varsity" team or even breaking districts into smaller geographic areas (I think the link to geography is very important)

Other thoughts

• Don't add too many competing sports seasons - we want to make this popular enough that you actually get coverage in the Sun, not so fragmented that no one can pay attention
• Have the men's and women's teams compete one right after the other. That was how we did it back in my high school and it helped to ensure a bigger crowd for the less popular team (often the women's team, but if the women's team is good and the men stink...)
• Get some of the professional sports figures involved as coaches if possible
• Get local bloggers and news outlets to cover at least the championships. You could probably get local TV broadcasters out to the try-outs for the first season as a novelty news story.
• Make sure that basketball is the first season, every district will field a basketball team; not sure every district will be able to find a soccer team.
• Play up cross-town rivalries, but provide adequate security

Sports to add

• Cross Country - I really like the idea of getting very large teams together (it would pull a lot of people into the competition and you'd get a big multiplier effect as they told their friend about it)
• Volleyball - could use the same equipment as basketball, but in a different season
• Ultimate Frisbee - just because I love the sport and it uses the same infrastructure as soccer, bonus: self-refereed so you save a little money there
• Golf - we have the infrastructure and it is fairly well spread out around the city; this would draw a different demographic as well
• Track and field - takes a little more in terms of infrastructure (i.e. pole vault), but a lot of it exists at high schools and could be borrowed?
• Duckpin bowling - we don't really have the infrastructure for this, but it's a Baltimore heritage thing - let's build some more alleys and really make it a city-wide passtime

Sports to avoid (at least initially)

• Football - too expensive for players to provide practice equipment; mostly only played by men
• Lacrosse - same as football, except for the gender thing
• Cycling - equipment costs are out of reach for most Baltimore residents
• Swimming - don't think we have the infrastructure (but I could be wrong?)
• Wrestling - too many referees, too few fans of real wrestling
• Hockey - not enough infrastructure, not popular here, expensive equipment
• Weight lighting - I'd be leery of this sport given the temptation of steroids and the cost of trying to drug test competitors
• Dodgeball, broomball, etc. - recreational leagues for these sports already exist and they are considered to be more about socializing and drinking than athletics; if this is to be a serious amateur sports league, steer clear of these sports

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Sports unite people and give everyone a great outlet for emotions. They give people a sense of pride in their community and can create community (I definitely saw this growing up in small town playing high school sports). Think about it, this is a pretty low-cost initiative that the city could start that could eventually result in a very real advantage to the city. Even if other cities eventually copied this model, I think that Baltimore, with it's long-time dedication to neighborhoods and local community could still have an advantage. Most importantly, I think it would succeed in the city better than the county, providing that extra incentive to bring people over the line and into the city's tax-base.