It was Imam Earl El Amin who first described Baltimore to me as a city of neighborhoods in a Baltimore Legacy Project interview. This was not always a city narrated through the vocabulary of The Corner, Homicide, The Wire, or We Own This City. Entire African American neighborhoods in Old West Baltimore—Upton, Sandtown-Winchester, Harlem Park—were not incidental outcomes of history but products of policy. While whiter andwealthier neighborhoods received consistent investment, majority-Black neighborhoods were left to manage scarcity as a condition of daily life. A 2020 Urban Institute study found that majority-Black neighborhoods in Baltimore received three times less investment than white neighborhoods between 2004 and 2016.