Exceptional.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: RUNDLES wrap-up

For years and years the development buzz in the Denver metro area was suburban--the Denver Tech Center, Highlands Ranch, the E-470 beltway, the Boulder turnpike; south, north, east, southwest, northwest. Some of it was fine, much of it was cookie cutter, and all of it was sprawl, the kind of development--residential and commercial--that requires a lot of automobiles.

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But in recent years Denver has been very lucky to have major pieces of development property within the adjacent city--so-called in-fill development--at the old Lowry Air Force Base and the shuttered Denver International Airport. Just one of these would be one of the largest in-fill development opportunities in any city in the country, but we got both of them in relatively short order. What has been accomplished with these properties, unfortunately, is a mix of wonderful and pedestrian--as in mediocre and not pedestrian-friendly.

I love the mix of housing and "city-center" streetscapes in both locations, particularly at Lowry, but I could do without the big-box retail and oceans of parking lots prevalent within the Stapleton development. I was hoping for more of a sense of community, and a seamless tie into the adjacent neighborhoods, something nearly accomplished at Lowry and only partially successful at Stapleton.

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The object, it seems to me, should be to create a place where people--all kinds of people, at different stages of life--would want to live, while at the same time a place that would be an attraction to dwellers in the existing adjacent neighborhoods and beyond--and I mean more than merely shopping opportunities.

Lowry seems to have this, with parks and ball fields, work spaces, music venues and educational centers mixed into neighborhoods and a city center. Stapleton attempts this, but falls short, I believe, because the major retail centers and other amenities in the development have no real tic to the neighborhoods--whether new in the development or existing next door. And both Lowry and Stapleton miss the mark by featuring only one city-center, there should be two or more "downtowns," which would make the whole(s) more walk-able.

Don't get me wrong, there are many things about both developments I find very appealing. The point is that large tracts of undeveloped land within the boundary of a city--any city--are rare commodities, and they require collaborative thinking well beyond what you'd expect from the...