2014 Columbia Mall shooting

The Mall in Columbia, also known as the Columbia Mall, is the central shopping mall for the planned community of Columbia, Maryland, United States. It has over 200 specialty stores and the anchor stores are AMC Theatres, Lidl, Main Event Entertainment, Barnes & Noble, JCPenney, Macy's, and Nordstrom. Restaurants include PF Chang's, Maggiano's Little Italy and The Cheesecake Factory. It is located in the Town Center area of the city and attracts shoppers from surrounding counties in Maryland.

Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods is a large central park in downtown Columbia, Maryland. The park includes the Chrysalis, a 2016 amphitheater with lawn seating. The Chrysalis has hosted musical performances, ballet, plays, Maker Faire, and numerous community events.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is an outdoor concert venue located within Symphony Woods, a 40-acre (160,000 m2) lot of preserved land in the heart of the planned community of Columbia, Maryland. In 2010, Merriweather was named the second best amphitheater in the United States by Billboard magazine. The venue was also ranked as the fourth best amphitheater in the United States by Rolling Stone in 2013. It was again ranked by Consequence of Sound at number 29 of all music venues in the nation out of 100 in 2016.

Town Center is one of the ten villages in Columbia, Maryland, United States, first occupied in 1974. The Town Center is a non-contiguous, diverse area, and the most urban-like, ranging from multi-level high density apartments, homes and office buildings to single family homes.The six residential neighborhoods in the village include Amesbury Hill, Banneker, Creighton's Run, Lakefront, Vantage Point, and Warfield Triangle.

Lake Kittamaqundi is a man made 27-acre (110,000 m2) reservoir located in Columbia, Maryland in the vicinity of the Mall in Columbia as well as Merriweather Post Pavilion. It is also adjacent to offices and visible from US-29.The lake was created by The Rouse Company in 1966 during the development of Columbia. The company and its homeowners association claimed it was named after the first Indian settlement in Howard County and "Kittamaqundi" in the tribe's language translates to "meeting place." Kittamaqundi actually was a 17th-century Piscataway village 40 miles (64 km) south that was named after its ruler, 'Kittamaquund'. "Kittamaqundi" translates to "Great Beaver Place" or "Strong Bear".The area surrounding the lake is a popular location for various summer festivals and 4th of July fireworks.

Toby's Dinner Theatre is a dinner theater based in Columbia, Maryland.

Oakland or Oakland Manor is a Federal style stone manor house commissioned in 1810 by Charles Sterrett Ridgely in the Howard District of Anne Arundel County, Maryland (now Howard County). The lands that became Oakland Manor were patented by John Dorsey as "Dorsey's Adventure" in 1688 which was willed to his grandson Edward Dorsey. In 1785, Luther Martin purchased properties named "Dorsey's Adventure", "Dorsey's Inheritance", "Good for Little", "Chew's Vineyard", and "Adam the First" to make the 2300 acre "Luther Martin's Elkridge Farm".

The Howard County Center of African American Culture is located in Columbia, Maryland. The museum host exhibitions and event about African American history.

The Chemical Propulsion Information Analysis Center (CPIAC) is one of several United States Department of Defense (DoD) sponsored Information Analysis Centers (IACs), administered by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). CPIAC is the oldest IAC, having been in continuous operation since 1946 when it was founded as the Rocket Propellant Information Agency as part of the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. Currently CPIAC is operated by The Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering. IACs are part of the DoD’s Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) prescribed by DoD Directive 3200.12 and are chartered under DoD Instruction 3200.14-E5.CPIAC is the U.S. national clearinghouse and technical resource center for data, reports, and analyses related to system and component level technologies for chemical, electrical, and nuclear propulsion for rockets, missiles, and space and gun propulsion systems. CPIAC also provides technical and administrative support to the Joint Army-Navy-NASA-Air Force (JANNAF) Interagency Propulsion Committee, the primary technical information exchange platform for the U.S. propulsion industry.In addition to maintaining the most comprehensive propulsion-related scientific and technical reports collection in the world, CPIAC maintains a number of industry handbooks, manuals, databases, and its signature Propulsion Information Retrieval System (PIRS). This extensive information collection represents the documented national knowledge base in chemical rocket propulsion and is available for dissemination to eligible individuals and organizations.As a knowledgeable and objective participant in supporting industry research and development, CPIAC assists sponsors in maximizing increasingly limited research and development funding by focusing on key propulsion system technology needs through workshops, symposia, technical assessments, and surveys. CPIAC also performs research in support of its publication of a series of recurrent technology reviews and state-of-the-art reports in selected technical areas.

Wilde Lake High School is a secondary school located in Columbia, Maryland's Village of Wilde Lake, United States, one of 13 public high schools in Howard County. The school is centrally located in Howard County, and its district borders that of River Hill High School, Marriotts Ridge High School, Centennial High School, Howard High School, Oakland Mills High School, and Atholton High School.

Wilde Lake is a man-made drainage reservoir dug in 1966 and the name of the surrounding "village" of neighborhoods located in Columbia, Maryland, just north and west of Columbia Town Center. The village was the first part of Columbia's "New Town" to be built in the late 1960s, James W. Rouse and Frazar B. Wilde formally opened the neighborhood on June 21, 1967. The lake and village are named for Frazar B. Wilde, a past chairman of the board of Connecticut General Life Insurance Company and former employer of James Rouse. In 1963, the company agreed to fund the secret land purchases and, in return, acquired an equity participation. This arrangement was subsequently formalized by the creation of The Howard Research and Development Corporation, the joint venture established to develop Columbia.

Columbia is a census-designated place in Howard County, Maryland, United States. It is a planned community consisting of 10 self-contained villages. The census-designated place had a population of 104,681 at the 2020 census, making it the second most populous community in Maryland after Baltimore. Columbia, located between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., is officially part of the Baltimore metropolitan area. Columbia proper consists only of that territory governed by the Columbia Association, but larger areas are included under its name by the U.S. Postal Service and the Census Bureau. These include several other communities which predate Columbia, including Simpsonville, Atholton, and in the case of the census, part of Clarksville. Columbia began with the idea that a city could enhance its residents' quality of life. Developer James Rouse attempted to create the new community in terms of human values, rather than economics and engineering. Opened in 1967, Columbia was intended to not only eliminate the inconveniences of then-current subdivision design, but also eliminate racial, religious and class segregation.