Featured Neighborhood - Columbia MD

The city of Columbia, MD, sprang from the ideas of James W Rouse founder of The Rouse Company. Mr. Rouse was a pioneer in modern Real Estate development & urban planning, with Columbia standing as one of his best works. Columbia is a planned community built up of ten self-contained villages that began with the idea that a city has the ability to better its residents' quality of life. Columbia’s main design focus was to eliminate racial, religious, and class segregation.

The village layout concept was designed to give each village its own small town feel with all villages having its own shopping center, rec center, community center and a convenient system of walking/bike paths that connect all ten villages. In 2006 Columbia along with its neighbor Ellicott City ranked 4^th on the 100 best places to live list and in 2010 they jumped to second on the list. The federal government is the source of employment for many people who call Columbia home. Several large DoD installations and R&D facilities surround Columbia with the largest being the NSA located on Fort George G Meade.