The survey was about the people not the city, no?
[WS:] No. They used eight categories (see the methodology note below.). However, Baltimore would score quite low on any of these categories, including people (rude, sullen, aggressive drivers.)
Baltimore is ugly because it is sprawled out, or rather hollowed out. It may have some quaint old neighborhoods but most are run down and boarded up. Downtown is plain ugly - a lot o bad modern architecture, cinderblock biog box stores (Safeway, Dollar stores etc.) plenty parking garages and parking lots or simply vacant lots. There is very little planning and the city is literary littered with poorly coordinated and very ugly modern structures - I often wonder if they were even designed by architects, and if so, they must have been dropouts from third rate schools.
Moreover, it is very difficult to move around: streets are narrow, congested and have poorly synchronized traffic lights (which for many Baltimore drivers seem optional anyway) so driving is a nightmare. The public transit system is grossly inadequate and slow - if I were to travel a 3-mile distance from home to work by city bus, it would take me about 50-60 minutes (that is, if the buses showed up) - which is basically the speed of brisk walking. Walking, btw, is not very pleasant either because sidewalks are very narrow, poorly maintained and walking through most sections of the city can be simply dangerous. Bicycling is not a good option either because of hills, lack of pike paths, narrow streets and rude, inconsiderate drivers.
There are a few small niches of the playgrounds for the rich, mainly around the waterfront with a few nice restaurants, cultural attractions, boutiques and residential units, but these are drops in a bucket of urban blight. There is a dearth of shopping in the city - there are a few big box supermarkets (Safeway, etc.), a few grossly overpriced yuppie boutiques in the waterfront area, a bunch of dollar and discount stores selling nothing but schlock, and the abundance of cheap liquor stores. So basically one needs to drive even to buy a loaf of bread - not to mention 10-15 mile trips to the burbs for anything other than grocery shopping.
In short, Baltimore is a really depressing and ugly city - one of the least desirable places to live in the US - which generally is an ugly urban landscape to begin with. I think it is no match to places like Philly, not to mention other northern cities, or even DC.
Wojtek
Methodology for the Travel and Leisure survey:
An online survey, developed by the editors of Travel + Leisure, in association with CNN Headline News, appeared on travelandleisure.com from April 30, 2007 to July 15, 2007. Respondents were asked to rate their choice of 25 cities (Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charleston, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix/Scottsdale, Portland, Oregon, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.) in their choice of subject categories (People, Type of Trip, After Dark, Culture, Shopping, Food/Dining, Cityscape, and Characteristics). All subject categories and all cities were available for rating at all times. The subject categories were served in random order to respondents. Responses were collected and tabulated by travelandleisure.com. Respondents were asked to identify whether they live in or had visited the cities they rated.