Feeding the downtown monster: (Re)developing Baltimore's “tourist bubble”

Baltimore has been long recognized as an innovator in downtown redevelopment, with the transformation of its Inner Harbor starting in the late 1960s, and including such visitor-oriented amenities as Harborplace, the National Aquarium, and the Camden Yards sports complex (Norris, 2003). These facilities anchor Baltimore's 'tourist bubble,' through which the city rebuilt its onceindustrial core into a enchanted center of post-industrial urban consumption (Ritzer, 2010): an appealing site for visitor outlay and corporate investment (Harvey, 1989). However, such is the halflife of late capitalism's enmeshed cultural and economic logics, that consumption sites almost unavoidably experience a diminution of their very uniqueness - hence, their ability to enchant - as their success becomes compromised by a combination of consumer fatigue and indifference, and competitor imitation and innovation. Cities such as Baltimore are compelled to engage in never-ending cycles of urban redevelopment and investment towards maintaining and enhancing their appeal to potential consumers. As outlined within this paper, Baltimore is clearly engaged in this process, through its hosting of a new Indy Car Race - the Baltimore Grand Prix (BGP) - and, the proposed development of a new downtown arena, convention center, and hotel complex, whose combined cost could exceed $900 million. In examining the BGP and new arena complex within the historical context of Baltimore's visitor-oriented development strategies, this discussion locates these empirical sites as the corollaries of contemporary conditions of inter-urban or “inter-local” competition, and examines them as exemplars of entrepreneurial urban governance strategies (Kipfer & Keil, 2002).