In 1918 the Maryland general assembly named the Black-Eyed Susan Maryland's "Floral Emblem." The Black-Eyed Susan " features the striking black and gold colors of Lord Baltimore's crest and a blossom containing thirteen petals, equal to the number of original colonies. These grow wild throughout the state, but it's illegal to pick them."

-Maryland's Office of Tourism website: www.mdisfun.org

 

Agitation

1. to make somebody feel anxious, nervous, or disturbed.

2. to attempt to arouse public feeling interest or support for or against something such as a cause.

3. to cause something to move vigorously or violently, for example by shaking or blowing it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Johns Hopkins and its Biotech collaborators have bought over eighty acres in East Baltimore and left them to fall into ruin. They have begun to bulldoze them and build parking garages, office buildings, and new housing for their employees, calling this development urban renewal. But it has not improved the lives of the people who live there now. On some blocks there are more boarded up row homes than inhabited home. The alleys and abandoned lots are infested with rats, littered with trash, and the area is poisoned by lead and drugs. They have created a ghetto, and eventually when the project is finished the area will be gentrified, by raising the property cost, and pushing out almost all of the orginal members of the community.

 

 

The Urban Armor project is not about beautification, revitalization, or development; it is not an urban renewal program. It is an "agitational design" project meant to draw attention to East Baltimore and the Biotech project, by involving community members to plant the state "floral emblem" as a "floral armor" that will symbolically protect, and reclaim East Baltimore from developers. The seeds are being distributed throughout the community, to be planted in abandoned lots, sidewalk cracks, planters, anywhere they will grow. This project will empower the community through reclaiming space and improving visablity and communication between the city and its citizens.