{"id":2591,"date":"2013-04-11T21:12:36","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T03:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2591"},"modified":"2013-05-24T21:01:27","modified_gmt":"2013-05-25T03:01:27","slug":"denver-urbanisms-big-and-small","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2591","title":{"rendered":"Denver Urbanisms, Big and Small"},"content":{"rendered":"

The big stuff is covered by a recent article in the journal Cities<\/i><\/a> by geographers Keith Ratner of Salem State University and Andy Goetz of the University of Denver.\u00a0 Ratner and Goetz provide a comprehensive look at transit oriented development (TOD) in Denver.\u00a0 Eric Jaffe at Atlantic Cities<\/i><\/a> summarizes some of their key findings, including documentation of a roughly 20 year trend of increasing population density in Denver\u2019s urban core and, in the last 10 years, significant increases in residential, retail and office growth around new transit stations. Jaffe also suggests that TOD in Denver is changing the \u201ccharacter\u201d of the city.\u00a0 However, I\u2019m not so sure about that. Urban land use and form is one thing; urban character is quite another. Character depends in large part on the kind and quality of available public space, its capacity for supporting different kinds of cultural activities, and the ethnic and class mix of the people who use it. \u00a0At present Denver is just as challenged as any other city where the character of its public spaces is concerned.<\/p>\n

\"LA&P7.800\"<\/a>

Residential TOD, Louisiana & Pearl Street Station, Denver (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

Character building is the stuff of small urbanism.\u00a0 The same week that Atlantic Cities<\/i> reported on Denver\u2019s TOD a new website dealing with tactical urbanism in Denver made its appearance. \u00a0Tactical Urbanism Here<\/a> will, according to Steve Chester<\/a>\u00a0and collaborator Michelle Pyle,\u00a0catalogue and map local, do-it-yourself interventions to show how small-scale change can have big impacts on the cityscape.\u00a0 Examples of such interventions have been the subjects of previous posts on this blog, like ciclov\u00edas<\/a> and\u00a0food trucks<\/a>.\u00a0Coincidentally, around the time that Denver\u2019s new tactical urbanism blog was launched two visiting speakers in the University of Colorado-Denver\u2019s College of Architecture and Planning spring 2013 lecture series also broached the topic.\u00a0 Candy Chang<\/a> gave a great summary of her artistic interventions in multiple cities at home and abroad. This included the \u201cBefore I Die\u2026<\/a>\u201d installation that currently occupies some space in Denver\u2019s Civic Center Park<\/a>, courtesy of the Community Coordinating District No. 1<\/a>\u00a0(which also helped to bring Ms. Chang to Denver).\u00a0 Equally compelling was <\/b>a talk by Terry Schwarz<\/a> of Kent State University\u2019s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative<\/a>.\u00a0 Ms. Schwarz offered a nice overview of various \u201cpop-up\u201d projects<\/a> designed to promote development and engage the public in that struggling post-industrial city.<\/p>\n

\"BID7.800\"<\/a>

“Before I Die I Want To…” Installation, Colfax & Bannock Streets, Civic Center Park, Denver (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

The urban space artistry and ad hoc<\/i> urbanism of Chang and Schwarz, respectively, are inspiring. I certainly think there\u2019s something to the small stuff if it prompts citizens to think about their built environment in new ways and if it opens our eyes to new development possibilities.\u00a0 The key challenge for tactical urbanism is sustainability; i.e., whether citizens, developers, and civic leaders can effectively collaborate to make permanent change in a way that\u2019s sensitive to, and informed by, a broad cross-section of community desires. \u00a0In responding to a question about whether her work had practical as well as philosophical value Chang noted that real estate developers have used the results of her famous New Orleans \u201cI Wish This Was\u2026<\/a>\u201d project to make common cause with citizen activists. \u00a0But, as Schwarz\u2019s talk made clear, all too often the feel-good fixes are fleeting or end up producing more gentrification.<\/p>\n

The main point here is that Denver is becoming a city to watch as concerns both big and small urbanism. Eric Jaffe suggests that Denver has the potential to become \u201ca\u00a0 working model for other cities to emulate.\u201d \u00a0I agree, but there\u2019s a lot of work to do.\u00a0 As Jaffe notes (drawing on Ratner and Goetz), over 75% of people in the greater Denver metro area still commute to work by driving alone. \u00a0Self-sufficiency (and self-interest) also rules on the local scale, if the behavior of citizens, developers, and city councilpersons involved with the very important infill project that we\u2019re chronicling at 9th<\/sup> and Colorado<\/a> is any indication. \u00a0<\/b>This project could have used Chang\u2019s wonderfully democratic \u201cI Wish This Was\u2026\u201d treatment as part of its community outreach stage instead of relying on methods guaranteed to narrow public participation. \u00a0Schwarz\u2019s ideas about how parking garages, pedestrian bridges, and other elements of the built environment can be activated to produce more and better social interaction might still come in handy once the project\u2019s design plan is finalized. \u00a0Many other ideas are percolating out there. \u00a0Minimally, Denver\u2019s realization of its potential to serve as a working model for other cities will require more imaginative design work on multiple scales, better solicitation of broad-based citizen input, some economic risk-taking, and the willingness to learn from little experiments in Cleveland, New Orleans, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big stuff is covered by a recent article in the journal Cities by geographers Keith Ratner of Salem State University and Andy Goetz of the University of Denver.\u00a0 Ratner and Goetz provide a comprehensive look at transit oriented development […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-denver-urbanism","category-placemaking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-FN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2591"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2713,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions\/2713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}