2040 Maryland Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan 2019 Update

The Maryland Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan (Plan) sets out important goals by which agencies across Maryland can partner to not only improve safety, but encourage more biking and walking activity.

2040 Maryland Transportation Plan

Every five years, the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) develops a 20-year mission for transportation in the state known as the Maryland Transportation Plan (MTP), as required in §2–103.1 of the Transportation Article.. The MTP outlines the State’s overarching transportation priorities and helps create a larger context for transportation decision-making.

State of Maryland Hazard Mitigation Plan

as required in 44 CFR, Part 201, Mitigation Planning

Arts and Entertainment Districts

Maryland’s Arts & Entertainment (A&E) Districts help develop and promote community involvement, tourism, and revitalization through tax-related incentives that attract artists, arts organizations, and other creative enterprises to towns and cities across the State.

Certified Local Governments

The Certified Local Government (CLG) program recognizes counties and municipalities that have made a special commitment to preservation, including establishing a qualified historic preservation commission to designate and review historic properties.

Coastal Community Flood Risk Areas

Maryland’s Coastal Resiliency Assessment is a landscape-level spatial analysis and modeling effort that identifies where natural habitats provide the greatest potential risk reduction for coastal communities.

Enterprise Zones

The Enterprise Zone program provides real property and state income tax credits for businesses located in a Maryland enterprise zone in return for job creation and investments.

Land Acquisition and Planning Programs

The Department of Natural Resources Land Acquisition and Planning Unit works to advance land conservation and outdoor recreational opportunities in Maryland.

Maryland Main Streets

Main Street Maryland is a comprehensive downtown revitalization program to strengthen the economic potential of Maryland’s traditional main streets and neighborhoods.

Opportunity Zones

The Opportunity Zone program is a nationwide initiative administered by the U.S. Treasury created under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Job’s Act. The program provides federal tax incentives for investment in distressed communities over the next 10 years. Areas designated as Opportunity Zones will be able to reap the benefits of capital gains to help redevelop underserved communities. Developed by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development to facilitate Opportunity Zone investment, the Maryland Opportunity Zone Information Exchange is the first comprehensive, interactive resource of its kind in the nation.

Rural Legacy Areas

The Rural Legacy Program was created in 1997 to protect large, contiguous tracts of Maryland's most precious cultural and natural resource lands through grants made to local applicants.

Sustainable Communities (DHCD)

The Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development's Sustainable Communities Program is a place-based designation offering a comprehensive package of resources that support holistic strategies for community development, revitalization and sustainability. Led by the Department, Sustainable Communities has provided local governments with a framework for promoting environmentally, economically and socially responsible growth and development in existing older communities.

Targeted Ecological Areas

The GreenPrint map displays Targeted Ecological Areas (TEAs), lands and watersheds of high ecological value that have been identified as conservation priorities by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Agricultural Products Development and Marketing

Identify and develop profitable marketing local, national, and international opportunities for Maryland farmers and agricultural producers.

Chesapeake & Coastal Service Programs

Maryland’s Chesapeake & Coastal Service is a partnership among local, regional and state agencies to ensure that the expertise, tools and financial resources are used to their utmost capacity to address Chesapeake, coastal and ocean management priorities.

Climate Leadership Academy

The Maryland Climate Leadership Academy will advance the capacity of state and local government agencies, infrastructure organizations and businesses to develop and implement sound climate change initiatives thus ensuring current and future public health, security and economic prosperity.

Home Ownership/Affordable Housing

The Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development's homeownership and rental housing programs help families in Maryland find, maintain and keep affordable and livable housing in communities throughout the state.

Land Restoration Program (Brownfields)

The Land Restoration Program focuses on cleaning up uncontrolled hazardous waste sites throughout Maryland.

Maryland Watershed Implementation Plan

Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs) document the steps, measures, and practices Maryland and its local jurisdictions will take and implement to achieve and maintain the final Chesapeake Bay TMDL by the year 2025.

Project Green Classrooms environmental education initiative

Project Green Classroom is an initiative to promote outdoor experiential activities and environmental education through Maryland’s schools, communities and public lands.

Tourism Development

Office of Tourism Development assistance programs.

2022 Water Resources Element Guidance Update

The Water Resources Element (WRE), a statutory requirement for local comprehensive plans, is designed to ensure that local plans for growth and development can be supported given limitations and constraints of water resources and water, sewer and stormwater infrastructure. This WRE Guidance Update provides best practices for considering and addressing water-related climate change impacts, and for addressing the challenges that growth and development pose to our collective efforts to protect and restore Maryland waterbodies. The WRE Guidance Update outlines best practices and is an advisory document. Comprehensive planning, including WRE development, is a local government decision.

Ecosystem Services

The benefits people gain from the environment can be collectively referred to as Ecosystem Services, which are commonly divided into four major categories: provisioning services (e.g. timber, firewood, food), regulating services (e.g. water purification, wildlife habitat), supporting services (e.g. nutrient cycling, soil formation) and cultural services (e.g. recreation, spiritual benefits.

Get Kids Outside Website

A storymap of Project Green Classrooms

Housing Market: County Profiles

Annual county housing market profiles reporting on housing indicators, demographics, and DHCD investment.

Maryland Broadband Cooperative Network Coverage Map

Maryland Broadband Cooperative’s (MDBC) coverage area map depicts service to rural Maryland by building an advanced, world-class broadband network across the rural communities of Eastern Shore, Southern, and Western Maryland supported by its Members who provide Last Mile service

Maryland Commerce Community Demographics Tool (ZoomProspector)

The Maryland Department of Commerce has an enhanced online tool to help businesses looking to move into Maryland or expand in the state find both the properties and the Maryland communities that best meet their needs. The property search engine, known as ZoomProspector, offers demographic information about communities across the state.

Maryland Commerce Property Search Tool (ZoomProspector)

The Maryland Department of Commerce has an enhanced online tool to help businesses looking to move into Maryland or expand in the state find both the properties and the Maryland communities that best meet their needs. The property search engine, known as ZoomProspector, offers a broad range of information about available buildings and sites.

Maryland Environmental Public Health Tracking

Maryland Environmental Public Health Tracking shows data on environmental measures like air pollution, health measures like blood lead, and demographic factors that can affect health.

Maryland InfoPortal

Maryland InfoPortal is the best one stop for finding financial and non-financial assistance, containing links to 700-plus state programs providing financial, non-financial and technical assistance and direct development to local government, civic and private organizations, and individuals.

Maryland Planning Housing Element: Models & Guidelines

The Housing Elements Models and Guidelines (M&G) curates national and state resources, as well as common planning practices and processes, to assist Maryland jurisdictions in the completion of a mandatory comprehensive plan housing element. The Land Use Article requires the housing element to address the need for and provision of low-income and workforce housing based on HUD's area median income. Resources include a housing data dashboard, self-assessments, a sortable affordable housing resource table, and a model housing element development process.

Maryland Protected Lands Dashboard

The Maryland land preservation dashboard is designed to let you assess the current status of Maryland's land preservation efforts and to access the tabular data that informs the dashboard as well as available land preservation GIS data.

Maryland's Consolidated Transportation Program (CTP)

The Consolidated Transportation Program (CTP) is Maryland's six-year capital budget for transportation projects.

Maryland's Green Infrastructure Assessment

The Green Infrastructure Assessment (GIA), based on principles of landscape ecology and conservation biology, identified an ecological network using satellite imagery to characterize land cover, Geographic Information System (GIS) data on road, stream, wetland and other resource features, and biological databases.

Maryland's Workforce and Labor Market Data

Your source for Maryland's Workforce and Labor Market Data

MD Bikeways Interactive Map

The Bikeways Program provides grant support for a wide range of bicycle network development activities. This interactive map shows bikeway awards by year and category.

MDP Priority Funding Area Map

Priority Funding Areas are existing communities and places where local governments want State investment to support future growth.

Opportunity MDOT

Opportunity MDOT provides web-based tools for small, minority-, women- and veteran-owned businesses and disadvantaged businesses to access valuable resources and prepare for upcoming opportunities related to MDOT’s I-495 & I-270 Public-Private Partnership (P3) Program.

Reducing Maryland’s Vulnerability to Climate Change Phase I: Sea-level rise and coastal storms

Maryland’s Climate Action Plan includes two climate change adaptation strategies that are currently being used to guide state-level adaptation planning efforts. The first strategy (Phase I) addresses the impacts associated with sea level rise and coastal storms.

Reducing Maryland’s Vulnerability to Climate Change Phase II: Building societal, economic, and ecological resilience

Maryland’s Climate Action Plan includes two climate change adaptation strategies that are currently being used to guide state-level adaptation planning efforts. The second strategy (Phase II) addresses changes in precipitation patterns and increased temperature, and the likely impacts to human health, agriculture, forest and terrestrial ecosystems, bay and aquatic environments, water resources, and population growth and infrastructure.

Reinvest Maryland

A Guide to Accelerating Infill, Redevelopment and Community Revitalization, Reinvest Maryland represents an opportunity for all levels of government to work together, strengthen collaborative efforts to support revitalization and reinvestment, and to engage stakeholders of all types in the effort to rebuild our communities and improve quality of life.

SMART DG+

SmartDG+ is an online, map-based screening tool to help developers and officials identify promising areas for the location of new wind and solar projects in Maryland. The tool focuses on screening factors of relevance to projects greater than 2 MW (i.e., bigger than rooftop solar.)

Snapshot Maryland Transportation Planning Dashboard

The Transportation Planning Dashboard is an interactive web map that provides users with socio-economic, demographic, employment, commuting information, and other transportation-related data. The Transportation Planning Dashboard is one of many dashboards planned under the Snapshot Maryland initiative.

Traffic Monitoring System Dashboard

The Traffic Monitoring System (TMS) Dashboard is a web-based portal tool that provides data analysis about traffic patterns, volumes, classifications and allows users to make informed decisions about the flow of traffic across the State of Maryland all from a single site. The TMS Dashboard brings together six different applications Volume Trends, Data Extractor, ITMS, AADT Locator, AADT Factors & Email Me.

Transit Station Area Profile Tool

The Transit Station Area Profile Tool provides users with station area demographics, employment and housing sales data, transit use and land use and development projects.

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) in Maryland

A Storymap of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in Maryland.

Transportation Element Checklist

Planning and MDOT developed a Transportation Element Checklist as a resource for jurisdictions in the early stages of transportation planning. The checklist is not intended as a list of requirements, but rather a compilation of items, data and other resources, questions, and best practices that jurisdictions may choose to consider when completing a transportation element and integrating it with other comprehensive plan elements.

Weather It Together

The Maryland Historical Trust offers a Weather It Together program, providing technical assistance to aid local governments in three key areas: hazard mitigation planning, disaster response and recovery, and climate change adaptation.

Why Maryland

For those who crave success built on both hard work and the right environment, Maryland is turning on the lights and opening the door. So take a look around, and discover what Maryland can do for you.