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Learning [the] landscapeStimulating East Baltimore’s resilience through education

Ben Dirickx

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Researching the case of Baltimore gave us thorough insight in the issues this city deals with. But beyond that it gave us insight in which dynamics are currently defining processes of progress and decline in the United States as a whole. By continuing reading on the current situation in the United States, I could determine that in many discussions education was pointed out as one of the major controversial themes in the country. In the United States, and many other countries for that matter, education suffers from many societal complications. High dropout rates are among the main problems in the American educational system. And I found out that the costs to society related to these dropout rates are staggering. These costs are calculated in lost wages, taxable incomes, healthcare, welfare and incarceration and they would account for a loss of $319 billion a year in the United States. A great paradox can be discovered in combining these astronomic numbers with the neo-liberal policies dominating our society and in constant search of finding the economically most efficient ways. If economy is so important, then how can we allow such great losses?

But we should not get lost again in numbers and economics and look more closely at the enormous loss of human potential that is caused by the lack of capacity of education to provide an interesting foundation for many of their students and to counterbalance societal inequalities. One could say that besides the crisis of natural resources the United States faces a nationwide crisis of human resources. This trend came about because of the absence of the knowledge about the manner in which human subjects take part in creating the city, in which

Educationas an entry point towards an Urbanism of Inclusion

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human agency affects the urban environment and shapes its outcome. The absence of human agency, whether the result of pessimism regarding the human subject’s prowess or of an acceptance of market dictates, is arguably one of the most troubling outcomes of that kind of approach.

In the absence of history and the human subject, the environment is naturalized, and the specific struggles, social movements, economic changes or political decisions which construct the city become invisible [Kaminer, 2011]

The amazing thing about human resources is that they are a renewable source, embedded in every new generation. The responsibility for the reclamation of this source is a difficult task taken on by the educational system. In areas like East-Baltimore this task is all the more difficult because of the complicated societal challenges this neighborhood and its inhabitants deal with. But it is also all the more important in this neighborhood for education to reclaim its capacity of alleviating the local human agency.

Although we did not specifically analyze the conditions of the educational system in East-Baltimore, I believe that previously encountered issues definitely have had their impacts on the educational system. But also vice versa, the educational system must have clear impact on the neighborhood. So the question remains: What could education specifically mean for a neighborhood like East-Baltimore?

Education can provide for an intermediate landscape between major players like John’s Hopkins and the inhabitants of East-Baltimore. The low threshold of the educational facilities form a perfect entry point to provide for the people while engaging a multiplicity of organizations in a structured way.

The fact that education is mainly oriented at youth, knowledge apprehended in a learning environment embedded in the urban tissue will be easily transmitted to these children’s homes, giving opportunity to break the cycle of despair more profoundly from the bottom up.

Education is responsible for teaching the future’s workforce that needs to continue being competitive on our continually globalizing market and thus has a major influence in the economic sustainability of a country. In this sense education has the ability to tap into the local capacity of East-Baltimore and to create an economic viability.

In the current economic downturn a reassessment is needed of the direct relations between funds and action. Inefficient NGO-networks, tabula rasa strategies, dis-appreciation of local potential has caused for a deconstructed landscape void of a healthy civil society. By reorienting this system of flows towards education, it could become the new polestar towards which all other organizations orient themselves to continue working in a more cost-efficient way.

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With a healthy family structure, an inspiring school environment, low crime and dropout rates, no parent should question the capacity of public education to form a proper base for their child to become a valuable asset in today’s society. The reality is, unfortunately, often very different. As previously pointed out in the analysis, our area of focus, East-Baltimore, is characterized by heavily distorted family structures due to high rates in organized crime. It is an enormous struggle for children from an unstable background to keep their interest in conventional ways of teaching. [1]Furthermore, the deteriorated school environments deal with low funding capacities which are tied to the low real estate values of the surrounding properties. This link between real estate values and school’s funding, to me, seems an anomaly in US policies denying the chance for communities like East-Baltimore to reverse their decline. The abandonment, vacancies, inadequately maintained infrastructures, ... all add up to the depreciation of real estate values and as a consequence, the remaining residents are basically being robbed from their right to education. [2]There seems to be a discontinuity in child care. While parents go to work from 8am to let’s say 5 to 6pm, children go to school from 9am to 3pm, leaving a gap in between where statistically seen juvenile criminal activity is the highest. An inadequate provision of after school programs causes for the children to “hang out” on the streets, becoming vulnerable to and confronted with the organized crime that dominates the area. [3]As mentioned before, high dropout rates are among the biggest problems that the US education deals with. all

Education in East-BaltimoreToday’s dynamics within educational provision

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1. Factors distorting normal family structures

2. Real Estate - School Funding

3. Discontinuity in child care

4. High dropout rates

previously mentioned dynamics have their share in the origin of this problem. Although many argue that this problem is declining, unemployment rates of ‘dropouts’ have increased enormously over the past decade. This is mainly because more companies start applying the policy of not hiring anyone that has dropped out. [4]

After this fairly negative story I should also mention that there are sparks of hope and great efforts are put forward by Baltimore to improve its provision of a qualitative learning environment. The city of Baltimore, even within these harsh realities, still manages to put forward its public education system as a nationwide example. Baltimore is highlighted as a case study for its accomplishments in bringing students back to school and partnering with organizations for solutions to reverse its longstanding trend of low graduation rates and high dropout rates. Last year, the city noted a near-historically low 4 percent dropout rate, and 66 percent graduation rate. Baltimore schools, in fact, are doing great despite the harsh circumstances of the families on the one hand and the economic situation on the other. There is certainly potential for education to extend its scope of activities and to take their social engagement a step further.

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In the area of East-Baltimore there are 4 schools which I like to address as potential players within a strategy for the neighborhood: Collington Square Elementary School, Dr. Rayner Browne Elementary School, Tench Tilghman Elementary School and the East Baltimore Community School. In total, these schools teach about 1400 schoolkids, about 98% are of African-American origin. This once again proves the immensely segregated nature of this neighborhood. The Tench Tilghman, Collington Square and Dr. Rayner Browne schools are all Title I funding schools, which means they get funding aimed at closing the achievement gap between low-income students and other students. The East Baltimore Community School on the other hand is an initiative from the EBDI[1], which is mainly funded by Johns Hopkins Hospital. Both Collington Square and Dr. Rayner Browne schools are Charter schools [2]. A citywide initiative called “The Breakfast Club” provides free breakfast in all public schools in Baltimore. A great initiative with great intentions but when reading the menu a discontinuity between the underlying philosophy and the reality can be discovered. Further can be stated that all schools engage in extracurricular activities to some extend. Programs are regularly organized with the purpose to keep children off the streets and give them the opportunity to further develop their skills and interests.

1 East Baltimore Development Initiative2 Charter schools are primary or secondary schools that receive public money (and like other public education facilities, may also receive private donations) but are not subject to some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each school’s charter. 5. Schematic representation of the characteristics of the 4 schools

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6. Collington Square Elementary School 7. Dr. Rayner Browne Elementary School

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8. Tench Tilghman Elementary School 9. East-Baltimore Community School

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Three landscapes currently hold the potential for education to reform their scope and become more embedded in the East-Baltimore community as a catalyst for change. Firstly, there is the programmatic landscape in which a reconfiguration of the stakeholders around the provision of education can change this landscape. Secondly, there is the physical landscape of abandonment. Currently this abandonment results in a variety of hazardous situations for the neighborhood while, these vacant lands and abandoned buildings could potentially become an added value to the school system. And then the last landscape is that of the infrastructures which due to the abandonment and vacancies have become oversized or even obsolete. These three landscapes are the structuring foundations for my strategy for the educational system.The first landscape I approached in a more programmatic way. For these schools to potentially create a functional intermediate landscape, they should be positioned in between institutions and policy makers on the larger scale on the one hand and smaller everyday practices on the other hand. Two major stakeholders that could be potentially important players on the large, coordinating scale and that are physically present in the area are the Johns Hopkins Hospital and MICA PLACE.[1]

Both of these stakeholders have a major interest in improving the conditions of East-Baltimore. First of all there is Johns Hopkins. This hospital’s main concern is health provision. In fact, as stated earlier in this thesis, it is one of the biggest health providers in the country. Paradoxically, it is embedded in one of the most unhealthy environments.

1 MICA Programs Linking Art, Culture and Education

Towards a learning landscapeEducation’s embeddedness in a lost landscape.

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Until today Johns Hopkins healthcare is mainly oriented at remedial healthcare and located in a very inaccessible facility for the neighboring inhabitants. Although they have many programs for drug prevention and other urban illnesses, they lack a profound strategy to cope with East-Baltimore’s complexity. The development policies are characterized by a tabula rasa development which is very disconnected from the neighborhood and neglects any hidden potential. In light of a strategy connected with the educational facilities, Johns Hopkins can go beyond these conventions and create a new strategy aimed at providing preventive healthcare which can elevate the surrounding neighborhood’s conditions. This way, it has the potential to lower it’s threshold and become a more inclusive institution. Secondly MICA[2], a school of art, has renovated the former St. Wenceslaus School in 2007 in which it has located MICA

2 Maryland Institute for Culture and Art

10. The schools, MICA and Johns Hopkins Hospital

PLACE. This school has strategically chosen this building, located between Johns Hopkins Hospital, Monument St. and the railway line, to provide a hub for study in social innovation design and civic engagement strategies. This place has already become an important educational hub for communication between policy makers and residents and serves as an important example in the first place but, as well as an important component in a strategy, together with the other educational facilities. The students of MICA can be involved in the further development of social innovation practices within this educational strategy. They will have the capacity to test this strategy to reality through minor interventions.

11. Threefolded scheme of civil society actors

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In order to understand the potentials of the second landscape of abandonment we found it interesting to map this defining element in the current landscape in East-Baltimore. The map [left] displays the enormous quantity of this vacancy in the area. The abandoned buildings are displayed in red and the vacant lots in orange. The defining character of this vacancy leaves the East-Baltimore landscape with a desolate feeling in many places. This further boosts the feeling of insecurity. On top of that, many practices concerning these vacant lots cause for them to loose their potential of public use [top]. First of all, there is the lead in the soil of these lots that has caused for almost 50% of the children in the area to have lead poisoning. This is caused by the lead-containing paint that has been used in many of the houses in the area. With further deterioration of these houses more and more of these lead-particles are absorbed by the soil. Therefore a thorough cleaning effort should be implemented. The

interest of the Johns Hopkins Hospital to embed itself in a healthier environment should be a big enough incentive for the hospital to invest in this cleanup. With an improvement of this landscape and the neighborhood with that, they will be able to reduce their current astronomical spending on security and programs for drug prevention. Then, the abandonemnt in itself causes neglect of this potential public space with illegal dumping as a result or with fencing to again prevent illegal dumping from happening. The blue light surveillance, no loitering signs and lastly, the over-infrastructural character of these spaces further diminishes the quality of these spaces. Nevertheless it should be said that the potential of this quantity of open space is enormous and could in stead of being a hazard for this neighborhood and its major stakeholders, become an asset.

12. Tactics of exclusion concerning the vacant lots 13. Lead containing paint gradually peeling off

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HEBCAC Community Center M&M Coin Laundry Johns Hopkins Durham St.

Abandoned Houses

Amazing Grace Evangelical Church Super Pride Market

Johns Hopkins Drug Prevention Program

HEBCAC Dayspring Program HEBCAC Center

Former industrial wharehouse

Former industrial buildings

North-East Market

Former industrial buildings

Our field work has been a major asset in search of small everyday practices that can be connected with educational activities in East-Baltimore. A combination of already existing networks and new potential components can strengthen the provision of quality activities that can balance out the appeal of criminal activities. The illustrations on this page display the physical presence of the different players that can potentially be networked.Many of these buildings are now abandoned but could be potentially used for programmes benefiting the community. I will elaborate further on activities of each of these players and how I potentially include them in my strategy when I discuss my design proposals.

14. Valuable constructed landscape

15. Building library

16. Matrix of vacancies [right]

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17. Hierarchy of streets [left]

As a third component, based on accessibility and connectivity, I intended to map the hierarchy of streets in East-Baltimore. A few major streets connect Johns Hopkins Hospital with its commuting workers. The most important north-south connection is Broadway, cutting right through the middle of the Johns Hopkins Facility. Attaching itself to this road is Gay St., a turnpike road in direct connection with the suburbs. In the south there are two roads connecting the hospital: Orleans St. and Fayette St. A second hierarchy can be found north-south being Patterson Park Ave. and Wolfe St. Besides that there is as well another east-west connection which belongs in this second hierarchy because of its major commercial importance in the neighborhood, Monument St. The third level of streets is the regular grid being, with some exceptions, about 120m X 120m. The fourth hierarchy, very specific to areas like this in Baltimore, consists of the small alleys in the back of the row-houses. This is a very fine-grained network of roads mainly used by pedestrians.Relating this map to the vacancy map allowed me to find a structure of these small roads that can be catalogued as underused infrastructure [orange]. This provides the potential of, on the one hand, rethinking mobility in this area, on the other hand, rethinking the physical presence of this infrastructure in the area. Much of this infrastructure has already been lost with, for example, the tabula rasa developments of the EBDI. To my opinion, there lays quality in the fineness of this structure as opposed to the major roads in and around the Johns Hopkins facility.

18. Broadway

19. Orleans St.

20. Regular grid structure with finegrainded alley system

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These landscapes have the potential of being reactivated through an implementation of a variety of educational and after school activities. When looking closely at the map of the idle infrastructure and overlaying it with the schools in the area, I discovered a correlation between these schools and this network of idle streets. This creates an opportunity to restructure the landscape around the schools by using this infrastructure as a guiding principle.To further structure these vacancies I chose to strategically search for vacant lots that can form platforms around the educational facilities for the schools to have the ability to develop their activities beyond the confines of their walls.

This all lead to the creation of educational platforms in East-Baltimore that have the capacity to change the current dynamics in the neighborhood. I propose three of these platforms with each of them their own characteristics though following the same physical guiding principle. The diversity of programmes organized on these platforms gives the opportunity for the youth to find their own preference of activities. But only by physically intervening in the landscape these programmes will be rooted more profoundly in the neighborhood. The interventions intend to create a learning landscape but as well by making use of lost or hidden structures it tries to give the opportunity to the residents to learn about the landscape they live in.

In the following chapter I discuss each of the design proposals in more detail.

21. Lost and underutilized infrastructural landscape

22. Vacancies connected to this infrastructural lanscape 23. Schematic representation of the design proposals [right]

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24. Zooms on the sports landscape

Rethinking vacant lots as Active FieldsCo-managing urban spaces to reboost school infrastructures

With staggering rates of obesity in the United States, one of Johns Hopkins preventive health strategies should be to get youth to exercise again not only within the school-hours but also beyond that. The means to reach this goal is to extend and diversify East-Baltimore’s community based and educational sports facilities and embedding them within a platform for healthy exercise. These sports fields will be co-managed by Collington Square Elementary and Dr. Rayner Browne School but by the “Day Spring” organization. This organization already active in organizing extracurricular activities, is centrally positioned within the platform and will form part of the management. This organization can extend the management of these fields beyond the school-hours so that not only the educational system but as well the community can benefit from this development. It can provide the necessary materials for a diversity of sports.

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26. Perspective view on the sports platform

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The topography gives an opportunity to change the characteristic of this landscape with terraces that become useful for sports activities. Materials derived from the deconstruction of some of the abandoned houses surrounding the area can be used to create these new public spaces. The strategy intends to respect the characteristics of the former landscape through reuse of these materials. But moreover by structuring these platforms on the basis of former infrastructural spaces, it respects as well the layout of the neighborhood and intends to remind people that this layout serves perfectly to be changed into an active landscape.

At first, a social design experiment can be implemented by a student group of MICA PLACE to find out what kind of materializations the different fields should have to be appropriate for a diversity of sports. Temporary sports events can give an exact calculation of what the surrounding neighborhoods might like or not. Respecting the layed out structure of the landscape this could eventually grow into an active corridor providing the neighborhood with the necessary healthy after school activities.

27. Houses to be recycled into the landscape 28. Calculations on recycled materials

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Johns Hopkins interest in health care combined with the HEBCAC plan to transform industrial patrimony along the railway to local food production places gives way to this unified corridor of distinct agricultural activities. The vastness of this nearly completely abandoned strip is excellent for providing healthy food for the educational facilities, a learning environment on field to fork awareness, research on hybrid herbal medicine and a reinstatement of a former river. Johns Hopkins Hospital on one side of this strip which catches an enormous amount of water and the old river structure coming in on the other side are both great sources of water. Just like the flow of this water and its distinct origins, I intend to structure the planting of the landscape from medical research oriented to gradually change into planting for productive purposes. In this sense the landscape would provide for both the community and Johns Hopkins Hospital and become a common ground for both to connect upon.

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Merging medical fields and productive landscapesDesigning the friction area between Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Center for Maryland Agriculture.

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The diagram on the previous page shows how this gradual change in the landscape from medical to productive outputs can be implemented. A quest for native species brought about this matrix of plants that could be planted in the area. Of course this is only exemplary and further research is definitely needed. Besides the organization on the basis of outputs they are also organized by size, aquatic characteristics and finally on the section I intended to show what the resulting color pattern would be in the landscape. The aquatic characteristics are important because, on the one hand, there will be constructed wetlands at the Johns Hopkins side and, on the other hand, the lowest point in the section, already today is submerged when it rains. The picture in the right column is an actual picture of this lowest point in the area.

The image below shows what this landscape could look like with in the front scene constructed wetlands and the Johns Hopkins Herbal Medicine Lab to extend in the back into community gardens and other agricultural activities.By creating such a vast strip, this landscape feature becomes a visible change in the city which positions Johns Hopkins Hospital in a local productive cycle, with the simple revenue of better health around its facility. Employment is created and the schools have access to more and better food. And last but not least, this site can become a learning landscape for the children to learn about the origin of what they consume.

29. Duck swimming in the lowest point in East-Baltimore

30. View on the agro-medical landscape

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The HEBCAC’s involvement in the reclaiming of this site, is mainly the reconversion of the old patrimony along the railroad but it can as well become the managing partner, employing people from the neighborhood to work on these fields as part of the HEBCAC’s leadership training programmes. After the reconversion of these buildings a Baltimore City department in the Center for Maryland Agriculture can occupy these buildings and operate a campus on agricultural learning for urban residents. Currently this organization has a facility far outside of the city, but I see potential in connecting this organization with urban residents as part of a strategy to relink city and region. Around the HEBCAC Community Center and the EBDI school, the agricultural strip can change nature and become oriented at providing community gardens available for East-Baltimore’s inhabitants. In this way, the existing popular community gardens can have more space and visibility. An expansion of the EBDI school’s playgrounds will be necessary as this brand new school will become more popular. Furthermore, I believe that the remaining houses on this strip should be reconversed to meet today’s needs in the housing market. By clearing out the inner block, space becomes available to extend these houses into this space. With the former stream coming through and potentially holding water again, this space could be naturalized and become a semi-public space that intends to showcase the existence of this stream.

60. Center for Maryland Agriculture - Baltimore City Department

31. Perspective on developments.

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From the campus of Johns Hopkins Hospital, Monument Street stretches eastward as an economic spine. This street forms part of the federal Main-Street Funding program. It is one of the main attractors in the area for small businesses and shops. Unfortunately, once off this street, the environment becomes a lot less vivid. This strategy aims at broadening the scope of this street by reviving some of the perpendicular streets that have become obsolete, by applying material and topographic changes to the street-scape but also setting up a programmatic network that supports these changes.Parallelling this spine with a variety of activities that are related to this economic activity, could potentially activate this “back yard”. The Tench Tilghman school can develop an economic activity to strengthen their educational provision and by doing that benefit from this Monument street economic activity. Provision of workshop and food production spaces where commodities can be produced to sell locally in the North-East Market, for instance, could revive these back spaces. This stand in North-East Market can become a project of MICA PLACE to turn around the current situation of this market being a source of very low quality food.

32. Section over Tench Tilghman school and surroundings [above]33. Programmatic scheme of the Tench Tilghman platform [top right]

34. Plan of the Tench Tilghman Platform [below right]

Accomodating parallel activitiesCreating a cascade network of platforms branching from Monument Street

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A variety of open lots can be designated to the Tench Tilghman School for the children to creatively make use off. They can become extensions of the already present gardening initiative of the Amazing Grace Lutheran Church, dedicated to feed those in need of it. The open space in front of the Johns Hopkins drug prevention programme building has the potential to become a public venue, designated to open air events and workshops to further strengthen their strategy to fight substance abuse. At this moment, like many other of Johns Hopkins initiatives the building resembles an office type of building, closed off to the public and denying the accessibility a public issue, like drug abuse, deserves.

Lastly some abandoned houses close to the school can be transformed into places for temporary shelter. Many children live in unbearable home situations and need temporary provision of a place to stay. With so many houses abandoned in this area these could potentially serve this purpose. The image above shows the crossroad of Monument st. at the point of the North-East Market where through light elevation the street becomes part of a pedestrian platform connecting the market to MICA PLACE. The same strategy is shown in the image below at the crossroad with the Amazing Grace church. The red building resembles the new youth operated venue.

35. View on crossing Monument St. at North-East Market

36. View on crossing Monument St. at Youth Center

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Here on the right I have intended to make two schemes representing the activated educational landscape on a time scale of twenty-four hours. The top one concerns the children going to elementary school and the bottom one the adolescents. This time scale is important because it shows how the gap between parental care and school hours can be filled up with activities like sports, workshops, a youth center, agricultural activities, ... Organizing these activities not only on a structured landscape but also on the basis of time, so that one activity balances with the other one, is an important feature to activate this newly constructed landscape. At the center of the ring is the shelter-facility which should be the last option for these children to be taken care of. Nevertheless it is a crucial component within the harsh realities of East-Baltimore In the design for the Monument St. platform a few houses,close to the Tench Tilghman school, are designated to be housing this shelter programme. By reusing the housing infrastructure, the children are not alienated from their normal environment while being temporarily sheltered.

37. 24h Time scheme of activities for children

38. 24h Time scheme of activities for adolescents

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Society’s resilience lies in the capacity to resilience within our youth. We owe it to our society to give space to the mental and physical development of our children. In the end they hold a tremendous value in human potential, a resource we can no longer afford to waste in our advancement to a better future. In my opinion, this reclaiming of the human subject within the field of Urbanisms of Inclusion is directly linked to our systems of education. Therefore this project displays a possible strategy of extending education’s incremental impact on today’s society through an implementation of urban interventions tied to the local capacity.

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ReferencesKaminer, T. & Robles-Duran M. & Sohn H. (Eds.) (2011). Urban Asymetries. Studies and Projects on Neoliberal Urbanization., Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.

Maryland Native Plant Society. About Natives DatabaseAvailable at: http://mdflora.org/aboutnatives.html[accessed on August 10th 2011]

Sanchez, C. (2011). School’s Out: America’s Dropout Crisis. [Radio Interview on National Public Radio, USA] Available at: http://www.npr.org/series/[accessed on July 26th 2011]

USDE (2010), National Center for Education StatisticsAvailable at: http://nces.ed.gov/globallocator/[accessed on July 10th 2011]

Images

All images are produced by author except:

[6, 7, 8, 9] Google Earth ©[16] Google Earth ©[18, 19] Google Earth ©