Baltimore is the largest city in the state of Maryland. As of 2006, the population of Baltimore City was 640,961. The Baltimore Metropolitan Area, which includes the city's surrounding suburbs, has approximately 2.6 million residents. Baltimore is the largest city in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area (CMSA) of approximately 8.1 million residents.

The city is a major U.S. seaport, situated closer to major Midwestern markets than any other major seaport on the East Coast.

In recent years, efforts to redevelop the downtown area have led to a revitalization of the Inner Harbor. Up until the late 1970s, the harbor had been merely abandoned warehouses full of rats and rotting piers. In Baltimore's early days, the harbor was the landing destination for boats and ships bringing cargo such as bananas, sugar, cocoa, and the like from all over the world. The Baltimore Convention Center was opened in 1979 and was renovated and expanded in 1996. Harborplace, a modern urban retail and restaurant complex, was opened on the waterfront in 1980, followed by the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland's largest tourist destination, and another cultural venue, the Baltimore Museum of Industry in 1981.

The downtown core, has mainly served as a commercial district with limited residential opportunities. However since 2002 the population in the downtown has doubled to 10,000 residents with a projection of 7,400 additional housing units coming available by 2012. Baltimore has undergone a major building spree in the downtown area, specifically in the Inner Harbor East district. The skyline has extended and will continue to do so well into the next decade. Approval has been given to build a new hotel/condominium complex that will be the city's new tallest building, dubbed "10 Inner Harbor", approved at 59 stories and 750 ft (230 m) tall. Other proposals for downtown skyscrapers are twin 65-story towers at sites on E. Saratoga Street and Guilford Avenue, an 800 ft (240 m) + tower and complex located on the banks of the Patapsco River 's middle branch area, and a 50-story condo and hotel tower at 300 E.Pratt St.

Once an industrial town, with an economic base focused on steel processing, shipping, auto manufacturing, and transportation, Baltimore is now a modern service economy. Although deindustrialization took its toll on the city, costing residents many low-skill, high-wage jobs, the city is a growing financial, business, and health service base for the southern Mid-Atlantic region.

Greater Baltimore is home to six Fortune 1000 companies, Constellation Energy, Grace Chemicals (in Columbia), Black & Decker (in Towson), Legg Mason, T. Rowe Price, and McCormick & Company (in Hunt Valley). Other companies that call Baltimore home include, Brown Advisory, Alex Brown, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank (of Baltimore origin, and at the time of its acquisition, the oldest continuously-running investment bank in the United States), FTI Consulting, Vertis, Thomson Prometric, Performax, Sylvan Learning/Laureate Education, Under Armour, DAP, 180°, Old Mutual Financial Network, and Advertising.com.

The city is also home to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, which will serve as the center of a new biotechnology park. The park, one of two such projects currently under construction in the city, will provide room for medical/technology upstarts as well as industry giants to tap into the wealth of knowledge in Baltimore. Baltimore is widely regarded as one of the world's most important depositories of medical knowledge

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