{"id":2953,"date":"2013-07-30T16:23:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T22:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2953"},"modified":"2013-08-20T14:52:41","modified_gmt":"2013-08-20T20:52:41","slug":"the-flip-side-of-urban-vibrancy-or-what-millennials-do-after-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2953","title":{"rendered":"The Flip-Side of Urban Vibrancy, Or, What Millennials Do After Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Denver Post<\/i> has the story<\/a> of a typical after-hours Saturday night in Lower Downtown Denver, and it\u2019s not pretty.\u00a0 \u00a0In 2010 \u201cLoDo\u201d was\u00a0 identified by the American Planning Association as one of America\u2019s Great Places in the \u201cNeighborhood<\/a>\u201d category.\u00a0 Denver Life Magazine<\/i><\/a> routinely identifies LoDo as one of the city\u2019s best places to live:\u00a0 \u201cBustling with shoppers, nightclub hoppers, sports fans, business people, gallery-goers and tourists, there is always something going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LoDo<\/a>

LoDo Patio (Karl Gehring, The Denver Post)<\/p><\/div>\n

That something, however, is not always desirable according to police data and the Colfax Coalition<\/a>.\u00a0 A person is more likely to be a crime victim between 1 and 3 am on a Sunday morning in LoDo than in any other part of the city at that time, especially during the summer months. \u00a0Calls for 911 service can quadruple during those hours.\u00a0 Violent crime rates on a Saturday night are more than four times that of a typical Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night.\u00a0 While crime elsewhere in Denver was down in 2012, aggravated assaults in the downtown area were up 14% and robberies up 31%.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cParking Lot Pimping\u201d is also a problem, involving men who have never entered the bars cruising the streets looking for a hook-up or just some trouble.<\/p>\n

\"After<\/a>

After Hours Revelers on Market Street (Karl Gehring, The Denver Post)<\/p><\/div>\n

Criminal behavior and hormone-fueled violence is to be expected in an urban environment. It might even be a reflection of an area\u2019s successful revitalization, as Denver Mayor Michael Hancock suggests in The<\/i> Post<\/i> article. Of the many P<\/em>ost<\/i> readers commenting<\/a> on the story one perceptively argues that the way LoDo\u2019s spatial boundaries are drawn\u2014to include some clearly dangerous pockets of downtown activity that are unrelated to bar-hopping\u2014inflates the risk and thus is unnecessarily alarmist. The crime that\u2019s the result of bar and club activity needs to be separated from the crime that otherwise exists in the area.\u00a0 It would also be useful to know how crime rates in Denver\u2019s revitalized downtown entertainment district compare to those of entertainment districts in other cities.<\/p>\n

\"Source:<\/a>

Source: Colfax Coalition<\/p><\/div>\n

Whatever the factors that cause this story to be front page news, and whatever the comparisons with other cities, this kind of publicity is probably not a good thing for LoDo.\u00a0 The Post<\/i> emphasizes that the violence persists \u201cdespite the best efforts of policemen and bar owners who spend thousands of dollars on security.\u201d\u00a0 What, then, is to be done?\u00a0 Stagger bar and club closing times? Extend closing hours to 4 am, 6 am, or maybe never? \u00a0Put more police eyes on the street? Provide more street lighting? Approve fewer liquor licenses?\u00a0 Install more security cameras, like the city has done in Civic Center Park<\/a>? \u00a0Introduce late night food trucks? Denver\u2019s Mayor and City Council are on the lookout for innovative strategies for dealing with the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Denver Post has the story of a typical after-hours Saturday night in Lower Downtown Denver, and it\u2019s not pretty.\u00a0 \u00a0In 2010 \u201cLoDo\u201d was\u00a0 identified by the American Planning Association as one of America\u2019s Great Places in the \u201cNeighborhood\u201d category.\u00a0 […]<\/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-2953","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-LD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2953","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=2953"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3018,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2953\/revisions\/3018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}