Comment on James R. Cohen's "Abandoned housing: Exploring lessons from Baltimore"

Baltimore and the State of Maryland spend tens of millions of dollars to de molish the city's physical fabric-its row houses, which once constituted vi brant neighborhoods and which developers now spend millions to recreate in the suburbs. But the demolitions are often counterproductive and sometimes just bad policy. As Cohen relates, the demolition of a dangerous or crime-r idden row house is often followed by a vacant lot used for dumping trash or dealing drugs. The problems flowed not from the architecture, but from the surrounding social conditions. An alternate approach leaves behind the dan gerous physical determinism that is at the heart of the demolition strategy and focuses instead on investing in peoples' lives and welfare.