Last week, Preservation Maryland joined more than 150 developers, local leaders, state agencies, and community partners at Uplift & Innovate: A Community Development Forum, hosted by the Maryland State Innovation Team at the Justice Thurgood Marshall Amenity Center in Baltimore.
The forum marked the expansion of the Maryland Community Compass, a free platform designed to give people the information they need to better understand Maryland communities and make informed decisions about development and investment.
Chief Development Officer Patrick Mooney joined Dr. Al Hathaway of Beloved Community Services Corporation for a chat about the people and experiences behind the data used to understand communities. The discussion offered an opportunity to bring a preservation perspective to a broader community development conversation: before we decide what a place could become, we also need to understand what is already there.
Historic buildings, neighborhoods, landscapes, and cultural resources are more than data points on a map. They can provide context for how communities developed, reflect the experiences of the people who shaped them, and offer opportunities for reuse and reinvestment.
Tools like Maryland Community Compass can help connect that information to the decisions being made about a place’s future. The expanded platform now includes Neighborhood Insights, Site Insights, and a directory of more than 2,600 funding programs, giving developers and community leaders new ways to explore opportunities and resources.
For preservation, better information can help create better conversations about what a community values, what resources are available, and how new investment can build on the character and history already present.
We were glad to be part of a conversation that recognizes that what gets built, and for whom, shapes a place’s future and that building stronger communities requires many perspectives at the table.