‘Any great city is a city that has high-quality transit’: Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

A 350-page document called TransForm Baltimore outlines a comprehensive overhaul to the city’s current zoning code.
The main focus of the changes to the city’s zoning code, changes that have been in the works since 2008, is mass transit, as the Baltimore Sun notes in a story published Monday.

Baltimore planners want to invite development around mass-transit stations where individuals and families can live, shop and commute without having to get behind the wheel of a car — part of a proposal to modernize the city.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told the Sun, “Any great city is a city that has high-quality, real transit, getting people from where they live to where they work, learn and play.” She mentioned such cities as Boston, Seattle and Washington, D.C., as examples of places that are more attractive to city dwellers due to their better public transportation systems.
City Council hearings are scheduled to begin later this month prior to a general council vote on TransForm Baltimore in late 2013.
Although, as some members of the tech community pointed out during April’s Reinvent Transit hackathon at Federal Hill incubator and coworking space Betamore, development near mass-transit stations isn’t necessarily Baltimore’s only problem when the city’s presently available modes of public transportation aren’t timely and efficient.
Watch the mayor’s remarks at April’s Reinvent Transit hackathon: