Protecting Land to Improve Communities
NeighborSpace works in partnership with community organizations to identify land that can be protected and used by the community. At a community’s request, we may attempt to acquire land in fee simple or by way of an easement in exchange for a community’s commitment to maintain the parcel as community open space. In return for this commitment, we will protect the property from development in a land trust and provide limited liability insurance.
Baltimore County has two distinct land management areas, an urban area bordering Baltimore City (outlined in blue, below), where the provision of public water and sewer infrastructure is an incentive to development, and a rural area that lacks this infrastructure, in order to discourage development. As shown in the map below, the two areas are separated by an urban rural demarcation line (URDL). Growth within the URDL took place in the immediate post-World War II building boom, before there were regulations governing open space, and, today, 90 percent of the county’s 816,000 residents live within the URDL. Growth ultimately fuelled concerns that a mechanism was needed for striking a proper balance between land development and the provision of passive and active open space within the URDL, a result that led to the creation of NeighborSpace of Baltimore County, a non-profit land trust, in 2002.
NeighborSpace is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation with a fifteen member Board of Directors and an Executive Director. More Info.