Baltimore County, Maryland: Integrated Land Use Regulation, Resource Protection, and Public Facilities

• Author: Rebecca L. Kihslinger/James M. Mcelfish Jr.
• Pages: 133-147

chapter eight

Baltimore County, Maryland:

Integrated Land Use Regulation, Resource

Protection, and Public Facilities

Baltimore County, a suburban county surrounding the city of Baltimore,

stretches from the borders of Baltimore City to the Pennsylvania border.1The

607-square mile county exercises land use planning and regulatory powers

throughout its entire area, and there are no incorporated municipalities within

the county. Baltimore County’s population began to increase rapidly beginning

in the 1950s as residents of Baltimore City began to follow suburban trends

and move into the county, and it now has 809,000 residents.2

In the early 1960s, a citizens’ association sponsored a planning study which

resulted in the 1964 Plan for the Valleys, prepared under the direction of Uni-

versity of Pennsylvania Landscape Architect Ian McHarg, later the author of

Design With Nature. The concepts in the 1964 plan led to the county’s adop-

tion in 1967 of the Urban-Rural Demarcation Line (URDL), an urban services

boundary, and were later incorporated into the f‌irst master plan for the county

in 1972. (See Fig. 8.1.)

Within the URDL, urban development was to be accommodated including

public services, while outside the line, urban development was not envisioned.

In 1975, the county down-zoned areas outside the URDL to reduce allowable

development, and focused its substantial open space protection and farmland

preservation and acquisition efforts in these areas in the following decades.

In the 1980s the county adopted a stringent set of environmental codes, and

it has continually amended and updated these to improve protection of water-

sheds, Chesapeake Bay tributaries, open space, and forests. The combination

of planning, rigorous adherence to the URDL (even as necessary amendments

occurred), and the marshalling of other state and county programs prescribing

environmental requirements for new development and protecting farmland and

open space, have resulted in a county in which 87% of the population lives

within the URDL on 32% of the land area. The 68% of the county not within

133