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Even in Portland, from what I've read, their growth management laws have simply pushed growth outside the city.
That is simply incorrect. Portland's growth management is based on Oregon law. Growth out side the city is not allowed. The entire state is zoned. So there is no growth out side of the urban growth boundarys.
It is a free country. People can locate wherever they wish. People have to live somewhere. I've seen what negative growth can do to an area, and it's not a pretty sight.
People don't have the right locate wherever they want. They have the right to locate wherever they can find housing, or land to build on. And they should not be allowed to to build where ever they want in the name of freedom. Freedom has all kinds of limitations. That why we have laws.
Please provide some links to corroborate the above.
1. I have to ask, and I'm not trying to be snide, have you been to downtown Denver lately, as in the last 30 years? The only highway going remotely through downtown is I-25. I-70 is farther north.
2. What historic neighborhood does a highway go through? Mind you, using the true defintion of historic, not just "old".
3. Where should I-25 have been situated? The river valley is a natural divider between east and west Denver.
4. Have you been to any suburbs of Denver lately, particularly these with which I am familiar, again in the last 30 years: Louisville, Lafayette, Arvada, Wheat Ridge, Westminster, Broomfield, Northglenn and Thornton, all of which have apartment developments, some of which are that old?
5. Please explain. I live in a suburban city, and I do not live on a cul de sac, and never have, yet I have had no trouble getting a mortgage.
6. Are there no roads needing upkeep in Denver? Do people in Denver not buy houses with mortgages?
7. I sure as heck would like to see a link for that. Most of the literature I have read says the "obesity epidemic" (a misnomer, actually) is worst in the inner cities. Colorado has the lowest rate of obestiy in the country, as well.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 11-16-2010 at 01:33 PM..
You're probably right...greed trumps common sense when it comes to growth & development.
"No jobs? No demand? No water? No problem!"
It depends on the area in question as in many places on the front range have plenty of water. As far as jobs and demand all we have to do is look at Rio Rancho, a suburb of Albuquerque, as a example. They got Intel to build a large plant there and that caused that city to grow. So large developments just need one or two large companies to move there and they are set. With all the problems in California its easy to get them to move out as Colorado is a much better place for companies.
Of course it will. Its just a matter of time before you will be able to drive from Cheyenne to Pueblo and never leave an urban area. I-25 will be 10, 12, 14 lanes wide. Traffic will be at a standstill 18 hrs. a day. Average commute times will be an hour and a half to two and a half hours. There will be lots of light rail and commuter rail, which will be totally inadequate to cover the entire area. The air quality will be 2x, 3x worse. Just look at LA for examples of what the front range will be like in the future.
The only thing that could prevent it from happening, would be Colorado adapting an anti-growth policy of urban growth boundaries. I don't see that ever happening, and if it does it will be way too late to stop it anyway.
Colorado does not possess and will never have the economic engine that drove the type of growth that occurred in SoCal after WWII.
And it is not just Colo - the whole country has lost that dynamo due to massive outsorucing of our manufacturing sector.
LOL these Malthusian horror stories are 20+ years out of date really.
Will there be more urban sprawl and increase in population - yes. Will it resemble the LA basin - nope.
First, let me say overall, IMO we need to ask ourselves the question, are we so attached to suburban sprawl that we want to fill all of Colorado from the Springs to Fort Collins with it? As a Coloradoan of 10 years, I'd hate to see our state go this way.
Let's think twice. Maybe we've been sold idealic notions of wide-open neighborhoods with lush lawns. But I think the reality will look more like Los Angeles, a place many people left to come to Colorado. Many people want to live in walkable neighborhoods, and many people want to keep some of our unquie tall-grass prairier ecosystem and farmlands.
But I think it is a mistake to equate development outside of Denver (or Boulder) as "sprawl" and think smart growth requires all 1 million people coming here in the next 30 years to live in the city limits of Denver or Boulder - I think that's just not realistic, hence my opposition to "no growth."
Sprawl can be seen as several dimensions: 1.) exclusively or mainly low-density development; 2.) large areas of single land uses that separate single-family homes from apartments from work from retail; 3.) street systems that largely don't connect, increasing congestion on arterial roads and reducing opportunities to walk or bike places; and 4) a disregard for preserving nature or farmland outside of cities.
Sorry to be a bit braod-brush, it sometimes bugs me when proponents of sprawl claim to represent the "free market" and "what people want," then rely on strict government regulation and subsidies to enforce and pay for sprawl.
So I will try to tackle these questions:
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1. I have to ask, and I'm not trying to be snide, have you been to downtown Denver lately, as in the last 30 years? The only highway going remotely through downtown is I-25. I-70 is farther north.
Most of Downtown was demolished in the Urban Renewal period to create the current dowtnown as well as the auto-oriented Auraria campus. Speer was widened to a mini-highway. I-25 severs the downtown from it's westside neighborhoods and has become a main commuter route to go downtown. LoDo is a remnant of what it all looked like. Look at all the parking lots east of downtown as part of the result. Now it can be argued both ways - the new office towers I suppose have more density than the old downtown.
I go to Downtown 3 times a week.
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2. What historic neighborhood does a highway go through? Mind you, using the true defintion of historic, not just "old".
I-76 cuts right thru Berkeley and several other historic nieghborhoods. HWY 6 also cuts thru many neighborhoods. Whether these are on a historic register or not isn't eactly the point here ...
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3. Where should I-25 have been situated? The river valley is a natural divider between east and west Denver.
The National Defense Highway Act (or some such name) never intended highways to be commuter corridors. They were intended not to enter downtowns. The destruction of waterfronts or natural valleys (let's face it, the River is one of Denver's few natural features) is an all-too-common development seen around the country - from Portland to Seattle to San Fran. to Milwaukee etc. A much better way to get people from far-flug suburbs to downtown is the good old interurban or commute rail (Inter-urban used to run from Arvada, for example).
IMO cities need waterfronts and other natural features to be livable. I think when commuters want to destroy these with highways, it is favoring the suburb(an commuter) over the city (resident).
Examples of not destroying downtown for highways include Vancouver, Manhattan ... much of old Boston would've been destroyed to make room for radial highways in one plan opposed by citizens. Portland chose light rail rather than a westide highway. So there are alternatives.
Examples of tearing down waterfront highways include Portland, San Fran., Toronto and soon Seattle. Real estate values, tax bases and residential base all are increasing as a result.
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... suburbs of Denver lately, particularly these with which I am familiar, again in the last 30 years: Louisville, Lafayette, Arvada, Wheat Ridge, Westminster, Broomfield, Northglenn and Thornton, all of which have apartment developments, some of which are that old?
Of course they have apartments, but very little IMO that is walkable. Densities are strictly restricted: Westminster for example has a max. density of 18 units per acre in the "high density" areas. I have too many examples of apartment or townhome developments nixed b/c of fears of crime, "those people", density, etc.
If I look at the comprehensive plans for these cities, I see the government restricts most of these cities to no more than 5 units per acre.
Starting in the 90s with the smart growth movement, there was an acceptance of mixing land use and building types, and this is reflected in newer subdivisions that include townhomes, apartments and even shopping - a victory for smart growth but also allowing developers to build to the market.
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5. Please explain. I live in a suburban city, and I do not live on a cul de sac, and never have, yet I have had no trouble getting a mortgage.
When the FDIC was created int he 1930s to use the government to guarantee 30-yr mortgages, redlining was used and mortgages were guaranteed in nighborhoods that generally conformed to an all-single-family, "garden city" influenced prototype (the Levitttowns, etc.) popular with government planners at the time. True not all had cul-de-sacs which I think were developed later but the concept is similar. They also often also had race-restrictive covenants. The impacts of FDIC, redlining, etc. are well documented.
Most developments from the 1970s to the 1990s required cul-de-sacs per local zoning and traffic engineering codes, b/c streets were forbidden from connecting. We have seen a big reverse - Virginia, for example, just banned the cul-de-sac in future development, because the state maintains all roads there, and they couldn't afford the ongoing costs.
I would guess your suburb is either pre-70s or built in the 90s - 2000's as cul-de-sacs have fallen out of favor in many communities.
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6. Are there no roads needing upkeep in Denver?
Because there are fewer lane-miles per person, in theory it will be more cost effective to maintain Denver roads. Reality of an urban area may be different. The point is the vast increase in lane-miles is a looming public cost to local governments, while the gas tax no longer pays to maintain highways, let alone build new ones.
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Do people in Denver not buy houses with mortgages?
Yes, most people in Denver get mortgages. Prior to mortgage reforms, Fair Lending laws, and the Community Reinvestment Act, people in minority neighborhoods often had to come up with 50% down to get a mortgage, due to redlining.
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7. I sure as heck would like to see a link for that. Most of the literature I have read says the "obesity epidemic" (a misnomer, actually) is worst in the inner cities. Colorado has the lowest rate of obestiy in the country, as well.
The literature is well-documented and available from several sources such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. A pracitioner named Lawrence Frank has a book (2004) summing up the research. Again, I said walkable neighborhoods, not inner-city neighborhoods. (What is an "inner city" neighborhood? Is Cherry Creek or downtown Vancouver, BC an inner-city nieghborhood?) If a nieghborhood has nowhere to walk and lots of crime, it is hardly walkable. If it has trails, sidewalks, streets that go somewhere, it is walkable.
Yes, education is absolutely correlated with obesity, more so than environment according to some studies. But I think a good environment helps at any income level. All things being equal, I would guess living somewhere like Boulder helps keep people healthy.
Colorado's childhood obesity level is quickyl catching up with the rest of the country. Thrity years ago, when obesity was much lower, Colorado's 19% obesity level would have made it the HIGHEST in the country.
Challenging questions. First, let me say overall, IMO we need to ask ourselves the question, are we so attached to suburban sprawl that we want to fill all of Colorado from the Springs to Fort Collins with it? Let's think twice. Maybe we have idealic notions of wide-open neighborhoods with lush lawns. But I think the reality will look more like Los Angeles, a place many people left to come to Colorado. Many people want to live in walkable neighborhoods.
Your analysis (though disjointed - no offense) leaves out the economic factor that drives the type of growth you reference - JOBS, lots of them that pay a living wage. Colo has been historically weak in this area. And along with the rest of the country -Colo does not have them right now and in the future will not have these types of jobs in massive quantities.
Never mind obese children (lol whatever).
LA's growth was driven by post WWII prosperity that does not exist now and might not again in our time.
Please provide some links to corroborate the above.
2. What historic neighborhood does a highway go through? Mind you, using the true defintion of historic, not just "old".
I know you are not directing this to me, but I think the best example of that would be Globevile. I believe it was a historically significant neighborhood before they bulldozed most of it to make the I-25/I-70 interchange. I'm pretty sure that some of the families who had lived there for as long as 80 years considered it to be historical.
Just look at a map and you can see a lot of pre-existing neighborhoods that were bisected by I-25 and I-70. Examples: Berkeley, Argo, Globeville, Elyria, Swansea, Northest Park Hill, Valverde, Lincoln Park, Washington Park, University Hills.
First, let me say overall, IMO we need to ask ourselves the question, are we so attached to suburban sprawl that we want to fill all of Colorado from the Springs to Fort Collins with it? As a Coloradoan of 10 years, I'd hate to see our state go this way.
Let's think twice. Maybe we've been sold idealic notions of wide-open neighborhoods with lush lawns. But I think the reality will look more like Los Angeles, a place many people left to come to Colorado. Many people want to live in walkable neighborhoods, and many people want to keep some of our unquie tall-grass prairier ecosystem and farmlands.
But I think it is a mistake to equate development outside of Denver (or Boulder) as "sprawl" and think smart growth requires all 1 million people coming here in the next 30 years to live in the city limits of Denver or Boulder - I think that's just not realistic, hence my opposition to "no growth."
Sprawl can be seen as several dimensions: 1.) exclusively or mainly low-density development; 2.) large areas of single land uses that separate single-family homes from apartments from work from retail; 3.) street systems that largely don't connect, increasing congestion on arterial roads and reducing opportunities to walk or bike places; and 4) a disregard for preserving nature or farmland outside of cities.
Sorry to be a bit braod-brush, it sometimes bugs me when proponents of sprawl claim to represent the "free market" and "what people want," then rely on strict government regulation and subsidies to enforce and pay for sprawl.
So I will try to tackle these questions:
Most of Downtown was demolished in the Urban Renewal period to create the current dowtnown as well as the auto-oriented Auraria campus. Speer was widened to a mini-highway. I-25 severs the downtown from it's westside neighborhoods and has become a main commuter route to go downtown. LoDo is a remnant of what it all looked like. Look at all the parking lots east of downtown as part of the result. Now it can be argued both ways - the new office towers I suppose have more density than the old downtown.
I go to Downtown 3 times a week.
I-76 cuts right thru Berkeley and several other historic nieghborhoods. HWY 6 also cuts thru many neighborhoods. Whether these are on a historic register or not isn't eactly the point here ...
I-76 does not cut through the city of Denver at all. The area of Adams County/Jefferson County that it does cut through was a mixed, commercial area (gravel pits, etc) long before the highway was built. Hiway 6 (the 6th Ave Freeway) is just a two lane one-way street in Denver proper.
<snip>
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Examples of tearing down waterfront highways include Portland, San Fran., Toronto and soon Seattle. Real estate values, tax bases and residential base all are increasing as a result.
Since Denver doesn't even have a waterfront, this is irrelevant.
Quote:
Of course they have apartments, but very little IMO that is walkable. Densities are strictly restricted: Westminster for example has a max. density of 18 units per acre in the "high density" areas. I have too many examples of apartment or townhome developments nixed b/c of fears of crime, "those people", density, etc.
If I look at the comprehensive plans for these cities, I see the government restricts most of these cities to no more than 5 units per acre.
Starting in the 90s with the smart growth movement, there was an acceptance of mixing land use and building types, and this is reflected in newer subdivisions that include townhomes, apartments and even shopping - a victory for smart growth but also allowing developers to build to the market.
My daughter lives in and apartment in Westminster; I don't want to give her address to protect her privacy, but near Wadsworth. Nevertheless, there are 'walkable' shopping areas nearby. In any event, your original post on this issue did not mention walkability, just density.
I didn't say anything about 'those people', and I really get angry when people make assumptions that anyone who lives in a single family house thinks apartment dwellers are somehow 'those people'.
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When the FDIC was created int he 1930s to use the government to guarantee 30-yr mortgages, redlining was used and mortgages were guaranteed in nighborhoods that generally conformed to an all-single-family, "garden city" influenced prototype (the Levitttowns, etc.) popular with government planners at the time. True not all had cul-de-sacs which I think were developed later but the concept is similar. They also often also had race-restrictive covenants. The impacts of FDIC, redlining, etc. are well documented.
Redlining has been illegal since the 1970s, and there is little racial discrimination in Denver.
Quote:
Most developments from the 1970s to the 1990s required cul-de-sacs per local zoning and traffic engineering codes, b/c streets were forbidden from connecting. We have seen a big reverse - Virginia, for example, just banned the cul-de-sac in future development, because the state maintains all roads there, and they couldn't afford the ongoing costs.
I would guess your suburb is either pre-70s or built in the 90s - 2000's as cul-de-sacs have fallen out of favor in many communities.
Well, you would guess wrong. The first house we bought in Louisville was built in 1978, and the second (that we are still in) in 1980.
Quote:
Because there are fewer lane-miles per person, in theory it will be more cost effective to maintain Denver roads. Reality of an urban area may be different. The point is the vast increase in lane-miles is a looming public cost to local governments, while the gas tax no longer pays to maintain highways, let alone build new ones.
Yes, most people in Denver get mortgages. Prior to mortgage reforms, Fair Lending laws, and the Community Reinvestment Act, people in minority neighborhoods often had to come up with 50% down to get a mortgage, due to redlining.
We already discussed redlining. Your beef in your OP seemed to be about mortgage interest deduction.
Quote:
The literature is well-documented and available from several sources such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. A pracitioner named Lawrence Frank has a book (2004) summing up the research. Again, I said walkable neighborhoods, not inner-city neighborhoods. (What is an "inner city" neighborhood? Is Cherry Creek or downtown Vancouver, BC an inner-city nieghborhood?) If a nieghborhood has nowhere to walk and lots of crime, it is hardly walkable. If it has trails, sidewalks, streets that go somewhere, it is walkable.
Yes, education is absolutely correlated with obesity, more so than environment according to some studies. But I think a good environment helps at any income level. All things being equal, I would guess living somewhere like Boulder helps keep people healthy.
Colorado's childhood obesity level is quickyl catching up with the rest of the country. Thrity years ago, when obesity was much lower, Colorado's 19% obesity level would have made it the HIGHEST in the country.
Well, really, so what? I don't know what Colorado's obesity level was 30 years ago; probably lower than today.
There is plenty of research that shows that suburban people are not more obese than city people. In re: the inner city, if I named a Denver neighborhood, I'd get blasted, so I'll refrain. No, I wouldn't call Cherry Creek, AKA yuppieville, the inner city. Denver doesn't actually have an inner city of the level of Chicago and other very large cities.
If Soot's study is right, it dents the theory that city dwellers are leaner because they walk everywhere, while suburbanites bulk up behind the driving wheel.
"There is scant evidence that obesity is directly associated with urban sprawl," write Soot and colleagues. Not all studies come to their conclusion, but those studies often didn't compare specific neighborhoods, Soot's team notes.
In their study, people with high incomes, college educations, and high home values tended to be leaner -- <snipped for relevance> The opposite was also true, the study shows.
Monroe County’s Kids Mirror National Trends
January 29, 2009
Nearly 40 percent of children and adolescents living in the City of Rochester are overweight or obese, while 25 percent of children living in the suburbs are overweight or obese, according to a new study conducted by the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Golisano Children’s Hospital and funded by the Greater Rochester Health Foundation (GRHF).
I know you are not directing this to me, but I think the best example of that would be Globevile. I believe it was a historically significant neighborhood before they bulldozed most of it to make the I-25/I-70 interchange. I'm pretty sure that some of the families who had lived there for as long as 80 years considered it to be historical.
Just look at a map and you can see a lot of pre-existing neighborhoods that were bisected by I-25 and I-70. Examples: Berkeley, Argo, Globeville, Elyria, Swansea, Northest Park Hill, Valverde, Lincoln Park, Washington Park, University Hills.
OK, I'll accept that these neighborhoods were disrupted by the highways. However, they all seem to have recovered, and some are considered the most desirable and/or up and coming neighborhoods in Denver, e.g. Berkeley, Wash Park and University Hills.
OK, I'll accept that these neighborhoods were disrupted by the highways. However, they all seem to have recovered, and some are considered the most desirable and/or up and coming neighborhoods in Denver, e.g. Berkeley, Wash Park and University Hills.
First I'd say that those neighborhoods are probably desirable in spite of the interstates that cut through them, not because of them. And I think it is a safe bet that Globeville will never recover from having hundreds of homes demolished and being bisected into four parts. The fact that there has been talk in recent years about rerouting I-70 around some of those Northeast Denver neighborhoods, I think is an acknowledgment that those neighborhoods were damaged by the construction of the interstate.
The point still stands that a lot of very walkable neighborhoods (places where people could live and walk to work) in Denver have been destroyed, over the last 50 years or so.
That said, I'm not impressed with this new urban crap either. To me they are just more typical suburban stye cookie cutter homes, minus parking and yards. Just a way for developers to maximize their profits by packing more homes into a smaller area.
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