Baltimore City represents a unique urban example in comparison with its neighbors. With its relatively small, and until recently, falling population, and having encountered a wave of gentrification (yet to crest…) there is a surplus of vacant space coupled with a heightened sensitivity to its condition and engagement, regardless of whether concerned parties are profit or otherwise motivated.

Where as in Washington DC, Philadelphia and New York, whom all experience far greater economic centrality, population densities and daily fluctuations, physical space is much more imperviously controlled, and the responsive efforts of collective determination rarely occur outside of ineffectual, bureaucratic channels.

In as much as Baltimore is a counterpoint to the typical urban situation in the northeastern megalopolis, certain instances within its limits can come to be regarded as compelling counterpoints to the regimentation of urban space in general.

The short cut, or crow-line path, is one such instance, it that it imbues supposedly unrealized, or vacant space with functionality as a time-saving device for pedestrian transit. Their occurrence is pointed by the fact that they establish a self-perpetuating infrastructure arising organically in response to pre-determined regimentation, as opposed to a sanctioned infrastructure imposed for the establishment of such regimentation.

	These paths almost always represent the most efficient route between unobstructed points as determined by previously existing streets and architecture. As such, they also represent a collective desire to nullify, as much as possible, the space and subsequent transit time between point of departure and point of destination. The mounting availability of geographic media (i.e. Google Earth, Map Quest, etc.) has similar implications in terms of the "flattening" or nullification of time and space. As schematic imagery continues to become a larger and larger part of a common understanding of space, vaster spaces can be assessed in shorter instances; the difference between spaces becomes less and less. The occurrence of these technologies, and the occurrence of the crow-line path represent similar compulsions. The focus here is not suggest that one is the consequence of the other, rather, to focus their combination as a means to question ideologies and hierarchies implicit in the realization of urban space.
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