HomeDiagramsDatabaseMapsForum About
     

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Regional Sections > United States > Mountain West


Reply

 
Thread Tools Display Modes
     
     
  #21  
Old Posted May 20, 2016, 9:56 PM
wong21fr's Avatar
wong21fr wong21fr is offline
Reluctant Hobbesian
 
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Denver
Posts: 13,149
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
"Greenfield" means development on land that's never been developed before. Stapleton isn't greenfield, since it's a redevelopment of an old airport. It's kind of an odd duck. If I had to pick a colored field, I guess I'd categorize Stapleton as a greyfield.
I'd go with brownfield. There was certainly a degree of environmental cleanup involved in getting the site ready, which is still ongoing.
__________________
"You don't strike, you just go to work everyday and do your job real half-ass. That's the American way!" -Homer Simpson

All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. ~Albert Einstein

Reply With Quote
     
     
  #22  
Old Posted May 20, 2016, 10:15 PM
Liberty Wellsian Liberty Wellsian is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2015
Posts: 810
Quote:
Originally Posted by DenverInfill View Post
Being a city-county does have its advantages, politically.

Denver City/County is 154 square miles of which 54 square miles is Denver International Airport.

Of the remaining 100 square miles (what we think of as the "city" where homes, businesses, etc. are located), approximately half of that, or 50 square miles, is pre-WWII "old urbanism" neighborhoods characterized by walkable rectilinear blocks with alleys, etc., and the other half/50 square miles characterized by typical automobile-oriented post-WWII suburban development.

By comparison, Salt Lake County is 807 square miles.

It's interesting to contemplate how the non-airport post-WWII annexations in Denver, which allowed the city to go from approximately 50 to 100 square miles in size, has influenced the culture of Denver. What would Denver be like if we hadn't annexed the suburban areas from the late 1940s through 1974 and, instead, consisted today of only the "old urbanism" parts of the city?
Salt lake City is 110 square miles that includes, Wasatch national forest land, SLC international, and protected wetlands of the Jordan river delta. Not counting the Airport there's probably only 40-50 square miles that are in the developed area of SLC.

SLC lost SSL in the early part of the 1900's and could have annexed West Valley before the 80's. SLC's tax base and its influence in both county and state governance are much less than it would otherwise be. From where I am sitting there is no question that Denver's annexation of the suburbs was a good idea. I don't think that simply ignoring the burbs would have improved either Denver's culture or urbanism. I think it probably would have made things worse. It's a good thing for the suburbs to have a vested interest in the city. I think they are more hostile to urbanism when they don't.

As far as SL county being 807 Square miles 742 of that is land the rest is water. The eastern third of Salt lake County is national forest and the western fifth is the Oquirh mountains largely owned by Rio Tinto mining. The 350 or so square miles sandwiched in between is where the population is, SLC represents about 20% of that population.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #23  
Old Posted May 23, 2016, 6:17 PM
EngiNerd's Avatar
EngiNerd EngiNerd is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Englewood, CO
Posts: 1,998
Quote:
Originally Posted by DenverInfill View Post
Right. Typically, the persons per household for the Downtown area is around 1.3, while in Stapleton and similar areas it's closer to 2+.

Maybe a nice generalization might be "Downtown is capturing one-half of the city's housing units and one-quarter of its population increase."
That's probably about right. If you go through and look at specific neighborhood by neighborhood population numbers over the years, in areas such as Highlands, they sometimes show population decreases even though there is a ton of new multi-family construction. This is solely due to "gentrification" and the significant reduction in persons per household. So while there is a ton of infill and higher density construction, it still may not be making up for the loss of persons per household. Obviously then there are areas like Rino, CPV, etc. that have had basically no one living there in the last 50 years, where the population increases are huge.
__________________
"The engineer is the key figure in the material progress of the world. It is his engineering that makes a reality of the potential value of science by translating scientific knowledge into tools, resources, energy and labor to bring them into the service of man. To make contributions of this kind the engineer requires the imagination to visualize the need of society and to appreciate what is possible as well as the technological and broad social age understanding to bring his vision to reality."
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #24  
Old Posted May 23, 2016, 7:57 PM
bunt_q's Avatar
bunt_q bunt_q is offline
Provincial Bumpkin
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Denver, CO
Posts: 13,201
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Hill View Post
What other greenfield development is happening within the city limits of Denver besides Stapleton? Am I missing something, or am I not understanding the definition of the term "greenfield development?"
The Aerotropolis. Denver annexed a large amount of land along Pena Boulevard when it annexed DIA. Green Valley Ranch, the new Panasonic City going in, parts of Gateway, half of High Point, are all in "Denver."

Ken's question about the politics of Denver minus the post-war annexations is an interesting one. I think the assumption in this group is that we'd be more urbanist, and possibly better off for it. Sure, if not for all of southwest Denver - non-suburban, actual Denver voters - it would probably be easier to convert Broadway/Lincoln off of being car sewers, to the benefit of adjacent neighborhoods.

But I would challenge that line of thinking. I think without some of the more suburban/stable areas to tide Denver over through the bad decades, the core city could've just as easily declined into insignificance. It would've been hard pressed to facilitate and capture a lot of the core infrastructure that has enabled today's ability to capitalize on shifting preferences, and boom as a result. We might not have held on to major cultural facilities, stadiums, convention facilities, probably couldn't have financed DIA without state help, etc. I think Denver benefits greatly from having a diverse cityscape, from old urbanism, to new urbanism, to everything in between. Allows us to weather a lot of change, without being defined by (and thus constrained by) any one way of thinking and doing things.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #25  
Old Posted May 23, 2016, 9:42 PM
CPVLIVE's Avatar
CPVLIVE CPVLIVE is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 575
Quote:
Originally Posted by bunt_q View Post
The Aerotropolis. Denver annexed a large amount of land along Pena Boulevard when it annexed DIA. Green Valley Ranch, the new Panasonic City going in, parts of Gateway, half of High Point, are all in "Denver."
How much of Green Valley Ranch was actually part of the airport annexation? I know they combined 2000 acres of land annexed as part of the airport land with 2500 existing acres to create the Gateway plan. I am pretty sure that Denver annexed 3000+ acres for Green Valley Ranch originally in 1973, which has me wondering.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #26  
Old Posted May 23, 2016, 10:40 PM
DenverInfill's Avatar
DenverInfill DenverInfill is offline
mmmm... infillicious!
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Lower Highland, Denver
Posts: 3,352
Quote:
Originally Posted by CPVLIVE View Post
How much of Green Valley Ranch was actually part of the airport annexation? I know they combined 2000 acres of land annexed as part of the airport land with 2500 existing acres to create the Gateway plan. I am pretty sure that Denver annexed 3000+ acres for Green Valley Ranch originally in 1973, which has me wondering.
None of Green Valley Ranch. The DIA annexation starts immediately to the west of GVR and went north from there.
__________________
~ Ken

DenverInfill Blog
DenverUrbanism
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #27  
Old Posted May 23, 2016, 10:41 PM
DenverInfill's Avatar
DenverInfill DenverInfill is offline
mmmm... infillicious!
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Lower Highland, Denver
Posts: 3,352
Quote:
Originally Posted by bunt_q View Post
The Aerotropolis. Denver annexed a large amount of land along Pena Boulevard when it annexed DIA. Green Valley Ranch, the new Panasonic City going in, parts of Gateway, half of High Point, are all in "Denver."

Ken's question about the politics of Denver minus the post-war annexations is an interesting one. I think the assumption in this group is that we'd be more urbanist, and possibly better off for it. Sure, if not for all of southwest Denver - non-suburban, actual Denver voters - it would probably be easier to convert Broadway/Lincoln off of being car sewers, to the benefit of adjacent neighborhoods.

But I would challenge that line of thinking. I think without some of the more suburban/stable areas to tide Denver over through the bad decades, the core city could've just as easily declined into insignificance. It would've been hard pressed to facilitate and capture a lot of the core infrastructure that has enabled today's ability to capitalize on shifting preferences, and boom as a result. We might not have held on to major cultural facilities, stadiums, convention facilities, probably couldn't have financed DIA without state help, etc. I think Denver benefits greatly from having a diverse cityscape, from old urbanism, to new urbanism, to everything in between. Allows us to weather a lot of change, without being defined by (and thus constrained by) any one way of thinking and doing things.
Nice analysis!
__________________
~ Ken

DenverInfill Blog
DenverUrbanism
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #28  
Old Posted May 23, 2016, 11:55 PM
TakeFive's Avatar
TakeFive TakeFive is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 7,556
Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberty Wellsian View Post
I'm super jealous of the whole City and County of Denver thing. 13 of the 26 largest cities in Utah are in Salt Lake County. Every city has it's own plan for a "Downtown". They all compete for sales tax revenue(the municipality gets a share). It has its upsides but I would trade our political borders tomorrow for something more like what Denver has. That annexation in the fifties probably helped Denver more than most realize.
Same with Phoenix. (Most) all of the metro area is within one county - Maricopa. As for annexation comparison, Phoenix has been more interested in extending their boundaries at the expense of supporting their core city area. It's why the most impressive urbanization is occurring in Scottsdale and Tempe. Finally, there is good growth in new residential downtown but they're decades behind.
__________________
Cool... Denver has reached puberty.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #29  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 12:14 AM
TakeFive's Avatar
TakeFive TakeFive is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 7,556
Quote:
Originally Posted by jhwk View Post
St. Louis County has 90 municipalities only one of which has a population of over 50,000 out of 1 million total. You can see how well that's working out for them...

Imagine 90 Lakesides, each attempting to support thier infrastructure with traffic tickets and court fees because they've stolen all the retail development from neighbors with TIFs in a circular firing squad to zero tax revenue.
St Louis still suffers from (ongoing) white flight from the black minority population to put it bluntly. But they have tried hard to refresh the urban core and have had some success. They have some nice transit and the areas of Clayton/Forest Park I assume are still doing well.
__________________
Cool... Denver has reached puberty.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #30  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 12:19 AM
TakeFive's Avatar
TakeFive TakeFive is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 7,556
Quote:
Originally Posted by DenverInfill View Post
Nice analysis!
I wholeheartedly agree.
__________________
Cool... Denver has reached puberty.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #31  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 2:52 AM
Sam Hill's Avatar
Sam Hill Sam Hill is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Denver
Posts: 872
Quote:
Originally Posted by bunt_q View Post
The Aerotropolis. Denver annexed a large amount of land along Pena Boulevard when it annexed DIA. Green Valley Ranch, the new Panasonic City going in, parts of Gateway, half of High Point, are all in "Denver."
I’m aware of the plans for a so-called Aerotropolis and I realize Denver annexed that land. I guess my question was mostly rhetorical. At the beginning of this thread, people seemed to be attributing much of Denver’s population growth to so-called greenfield development and citing Stapleton in doing so. My point was, even when Stapleton is totally built out (and it still has a long way to go) it will only have a total population of 30,000 people. So then, where is all this greenfield development that is supposedly attributing to some large proportion of Denver’s population growth? I don't see it. I’m thinking the vast majority of the population growth is happening due to true infill development and true densification of existing neighborhoods.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #32  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 3:05 AM
PLANSIT's Avatar
PLANSIT PLANSIT is offline
ColoRADo
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Denver
Posts: 2,319
^ I agree. I'm not seeing enough homes going up in GVR to have anywhere near the impact on population increases as some have described. If we include Stapleton and Lowry, sure, that's probably getting near 50%.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #33  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 3:51 AM
bunt_q's Avatar
bunt_q bunt_q is offline
Provincial Bumpkin
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Denver, CO
Posts: 13,201
I bet Stapleton winds up with more than 30,000 people. It might have that already. 30,000 was being tossed around at the start of the development, back when we naively thought there'd be a "jobs housing balance" there. Since then, tons of area has been re-programmed to residential, and we've seen almost no job development.

Easy enough to look at 2015 building permits. In Denver County, we had:

Single-family - 1,847 building permits. Those are probably almost all out at Stapleton, GVR, etc.
Duplex - 134. Those are scattered, lots of Platt Park infill and the like.
5+ units - 5,920 units. ALL apartments, but for a rounding error's worth of rich Cherry Creek condos.

Figure 2.2 people per unit in the SF, 1.2 in the apartments. (I'll ignore the duplexes for now.)

That's 4,063 people in the Denver burbs; 7,104 in apartments. Some time delay there, but suffice it to say, everybody else who moves here is packing into existing housing stock. Which is why it's getting so damned expensive. (Ken noted that Denver is adding 18,000+ per year. So there's a lot of pressure on not a lot of housing.)
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #34  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 4:04 PM
Cirrus's Avatar
Cirrus Cirrus is offline
cities|transit|croissants
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Washington, DC
Posts: 18,344
Quote:
Originally Posted by bunt_q View Post
That's 4,063 people in the Denver burbs; 7,104 in apartments. Some time delay there, but suffice it to say, everybody else who moves here is packing into existing housing stock. Which is why it's getting so damned expensive. (Ken noted that Denver is adding 18,000+ per year. So there's a lot of pressure on not a lot of housing.)
This calculation should be the subject of a blog post.
__________________
writing | twitter | flickr | instagram | ssp photo threads
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #35  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 4:29 PM
TakeFive's Avatar
TakeFive TakeFive is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 7,556
Quote:
Originally Posted by bunt_q View Post
That's 4,063 people in the Denver burbs; 7,104 in apartments. Some time delay there, but suffice it to say, everybody else who moves here is packing into existing housing stock. Which is why it's getting so damned expensive. (Ken noted that Denver is adding 18,000+ per year. So there's a lot of pressure on not a lot of housing.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
This calculation should be the subject of a blog post.

That 18,000+ was not typical; in fact it was over twice as much as the previous high set the year before of 7,600 so if feels like an outlier. Perhaps there was some catchup based on better data though, I dunno. Given the modest uptick in apartment vacancy in the 2nd half of last year that may be very hard to duplicate. Admittedly a good number of units were delivered so it's hard to say.
__________________
Cool... Denver has reached puberty.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #36  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 5:26 PM
DenverInfill's Avatar
DenverInfill DenverInfill is offline
mmmm... infillicious!
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Lower Highland, Denver
Posts: 3,352
Quote:
Originally Posted by TakeFive View Post
That 18,000+ was not typical; in fact it was over twice as much as the previous high set the year before of 7,600 so if feels like an outlier. Perhaps there was some catchup based on better data though, I dunno. Given the modest uptick in apartment vacancy in the 2nd half of last year that may be very hard to duplicate. Admittedly a good number of units were delivered so it's hard to say.
Incorrect. The average annual increase in Denver's population over the five estimate periods since the 2010 census has been about 16,000.

__________________
~ Ken

DenverInfill Blog
DenverUrbanism
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #37  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 5:51 PM
PLANSIT's Avatar
PLANSIT PLANSIT is offline
ColoRADo
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Denver
Posts: 2,319
Quote:
Originally Posted by DenverInfill View Post
Incorrect. The average annual increase in Denver's population over the five estimate periods since the 2010 census has been about 16,000.
Game.

What are the odds Denver reaches 700k this summer?

I say we chill a bit and get to 696k. So, put it at 20% chance.

Last edited by Cirrus; May 24, 2016 at 7:30 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #38  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 8:15 PM
TakeFive's Avatar
TakeFive TakeFive is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 7,556
Quote:
Originally Posted by DenverInfill View Post
Incorrect. The average annual increase in Denver's population over the five estimate periods since the 2010 census has been about 16,000.
Oops, I see what I did now (don't even ask ). Thanks for the correction.
__________________
Cool... Denver has reached puberty.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #39  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 8:23 PM
TakeFive's Avatar
TakeFive TakeFive is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 7,556
Quote:
Originally Posted by PLANSIT View Post
Game.

What are the odds Denver reaches 700k this summer?

I say we chill a bit and get to 696k. So, put it at 20% chance.
That sounds like a very good estimate.
Thinking similarly, I'll guess ~694k.
__________________
Cool... Denver has reached puberty.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #40  
Old Posted May 24, 2016, 8:43 PM
bunt_q's Avatar
bunt_q bunt_q is offline
Provincial Bumpkin
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Denver, CO
Posts: 13,201
Quote:
Originally Posted by TakeFive View Post
That sounds like a very good estimate.
Thinking similarly, I'll guess ~694k.
I'll go 693,999. If I can't find a new place by the time I have to vacate my current house July 31, I am moving to Phoenix.
Reply With Quote
     
     
This discussion thread continues

Use the page links to the lower-right to go to the next page for additional posts
 
 
Reply

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Regional Sections > United States > Mountain West
Forum Jump


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 11:39 AM.

     
SkyscraperPage.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.