I keep tabs on Baltimore in particular, I spent some time around there growing up. I'm sadly unaware of any serious plans to fix the city. Nothing with substance or credibility.
Detroit is undergoing a modest recovery right now that is properly giving some people hope that it could get better there. It has far more industry to pull from than what Baltimore does, and it appears to have a spark to do so, a cultural determination if you will. Baltimore right now is lacking that aspect, it seems entirely adrift in a swamp of hopelessness.
If the Federal Government were smart, they'd shift a few major agencies over to Baltimore and push resources into the city by doing so. Absorb some labor slack, invest into communities, put resources into education and job training, etc. It would make a meaningful difference, Baltimore isn't a massive city. Just normalizing their high school dropout (~70% graduation rate, versus closer to ~90% for the US) rate would probably do wonders for sparking improvement.
If you look at what NYC accomplished, going from 1,200 murders to 1/5th that over 25 or whatever years. They had vast resources to pull from to accomplish that reformation. Baltimore is stuck between a classic rock & a hard place, lacking the resources they'd need to do it.
The city mostly has itself to blame for ending up where it has, I'm skeptical it can fix itself at this point. If it can, it'll take a very long time. Failed states usually take a very long time to recover. Ethiopia took decades to begin finding its footing after the disaster of the 1980s, and it's still on a difficult course. One would assume Venezuela has decades of recovery ahead of it, even if things stopped getting worse immediately. I consider Baltimore a humanitarian disaster, which in the world's richest nation is about a thousand notches beyond unacceptable. The Federal Government should step in and effectively abolish Baltimore as we know it today and reform it, put tens of billions of resources into the city, at the expense of all US tax payers. It should set various standards for how to operate the city to try to avoid it ending up right back where it is and gradually return control to local governance. Little different than when the US Government steps in and takes control over police departments (eg Seattle) when they effectively have failed at their basic responsibilities.
Detroit is undergoing a modest recovery right now that is properly giving some people hope that it could get better there. It has far more industry to pull from than what Baltimore does, and it appears to have a spark to do so, a cultural determination if you will. Baltimore right now is lacking that aspect, it seems entirely adrift in a swamp of hopelessness.
If the Federal Government were smart, they'd shift a few major agencies over to Baltimore and push resources into the city by doing so. Absorb some labor slack, invest into communities, put resources into education and job training, etc. It would make a meaningful difference, Baltimore isn't a massive city. Just normalizing their high school dropout (~70% graduation rate, versus closer to ~90% for the US) rate would probably do wonders for sparking improvement.
If you look at what NYC accomplished, going from 1,200 murders to 1/5th that over 25 or whatever years. They had vast resources to pull from to accomplish that reformation. Baltimore is stuck between a classic rock & a hard place, lacking the resources they'd need to do it.
The city mostly has itself to blame for ending up where it has, I'm skeptical it can fix itself at this point. If it can, it'll take a very long time. Failed states usually take a very long time to recover. Ethiopia took decades to begin finding its footing after the disaster of the 1980s, and it's still on a difficult course. One would assume Venezuela has decades of recovery ahead of it, even if things stopped getting worse immediately. I consider Baltimore a humanitarian disaster, which in the world's richest nation is about a thousand notches beyond unacceptable. The Federal Government should step in and effectively abolish Baltimore as we know it today and reform it, put tens of billions of resources into the city, at the expense of all US tax payers. It should set various standards for how to operate the city to try to avoid it ending up right back where it is and gradually return control to local governance. Little different than when the US Government steps in and takes control over police departments (eg Seattle) when they effectively have failed at their basic responsibilities.