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Ellicott City, MD
Ellicott City was founded in 1772 by Quaker brothers John, Andrew, and Joseph Ellicott, who built flour mills along the Patapsco River, and the town grew around that milling industry into a substantial 18th- and 19th-century commercial center whose historic Main Street, built directly into the steep river valley, remains one of the best-preserved collections of colonial and Federal-era architecture in Maryland. The B&O Railroad's Ellicott City Station, built in 1830, is recognized as the oldest surviving railroad station in the United States, and it's preserved today as a museum documenting the town's foundational role in early American railroad history. The town's low-lying position directly along the Patapsco River has also made it repeatedly vulnerable to severe flash flooding, including two devastating floods in 2016 and 2018 that destroyed numerous historic Main Street businesses within just two years of each other, prompting significant public debate and infrastructure investment around flood mitigation for the historic district. Ellicott City's combination of nationally significant early railroad history, exceptionally well-preserved 18th- and 19th-century architecture, and its ongoing, serious flooding vulnerability has made it one of the most historically rich and most closely watched small towns anywhere in the greater Baltimore area.
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Columbia, MD
Columbia was conceived from scratch beginning in 1967 by developer James Rouse as one of the most ambitious planned communities built in the United States during the 20th century, designed around a series of distinct residential "villages," each with its own village center, deliberately built to foster racial and economic integration at a time when many American suburbs remained largely segregated by design. Rouse's vision extended well beyond housing — Columbia was planned with an integrated network of pedestrian and bike paths connecting neighborhoods to schools, shopping, and a central Town Center without requiring residents to drive for every errand, an unusually holistic approach to suburban planning for its era. Lake Kittamaqundi, an artificial lake at the heart of Columbia's Town Center, anchors a downtown that's continued to develop with newer high-rise residential and mixed-use buildings in recent decades, part of an ongoing effort to give the originally car-oriented Town Center a denser, more urban center of gravity. Columbia's combination of its deliberately integrationist 1960s planning philosophy, a village-based community structure built around walkability, and continued downtown redevelopment has made it one of the most historically significant planned communities anywhere in the country, not just the Baltimore-Washington corridor.
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