Backyards and front yards of Baltimore, MD

This geodatabase includes the geometry and identity of most of Baltimore’s (MD) residential backyards and front yards (Fig. 1). <b>The Area Of Interest (AOI) includes the entire municipality of Baltimore and refers to the years 2015-2017</b>. Parcel data used to locate yards represent the year 2015, building footprint data represent year 2017 conditions. The algorithm used to locate yards is the same of that published in Ossola et al., 2019a, 2019b and Locke et al., 2022. The algorithm used to locate yards is the same of that proposed in Ossola et al., 2019a, 2019b, with the exception that a 20 m buffer (rather than 15 m) used to exclude corner and other yards/parcels. The new 20 m buffer was selected to account for the greater variation in urban form and morphology found across Baltimore as compared to other cities. This buffer was trialed to apply a more conservative and precise approach to locate back- and front yards. The result is that fewer actual corner yards are misclassified as either front or back yards. A total of 335,318 raw yard records were initially located by the GIS algorithm. After removing corner and other yard records by using the 20 m buffer, <b>258,242 backyards and front yard records were kept in the end (141,511 backyards and 116,731 front yards</b>, see file YardsBF_buffer20m.shp). The number of backyards is higher than front yards as some properties in the downtown area have residential buildings directly facing the street with no or little front yard.<br><b>REFERENCES</b>Ossola, A., Locke, D., Lin, B., Minor, E., 2019a. Greening in style: Urban form, architecture and the structure of front and backyard vegetation. <i>Landscape and Urban Planning</i>, 185: 141-157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.02.014Ossola, A., Locke, D., Lin, B., Minor, E., 2019b. Yards increase forest connectivity in urban landscapes. <i>Landscape Ecology</i>. 34, 2935–2948. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-019-00923-7Locke, D., Ossola, A., Minor, E., Lin, B., 2022. Spatial contagion structures urban vegetation from parcel to landscape. People and Nature, 4(1):88-102. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10254