A Denver train station Credit: Mark Peterson/Redux Pictures for Politico Magazine
A decade ago, travelers arriving at Denver’s sprawling new airport would look out over a vast expanse of flat, prairie dog-infested grassland and wonder if their plane had somehow fallen short of its destination. The $4.9 billion airport—at 53 square miles, larger than Manhattan—was derided as being “halfway to Kansas,” and given the emptiness of the 23-mile drive to the city, it felt that way.
Last month, arriving visitors boarded the first trains headed for downtown, a journey that zips past a new Japanese-style “smart city” emerging from the prairie before depositing passengers 37 minutes later in a bustling urban hive of restaurants, shops and residential towers that only six years ago was a gravelly no man’s land—an entire $2 billion downtown neighborhood that’s mushroomed up around the hub of Denver’s rapidly expanding light rail system.
The 22.8-mile spur from the airport to downtown is the latest addition to a regional […]
Hi Stephan,
Do you mind to research as to WHY all this is happening in the larger Denver area?
Already for quite some time I come across info that is not so rosey about this development, but I’m not sure if it’s not too much conspiratorial? (spelling?)
I was recently in Colorado in Vail, Beavercreek, and Denver to give a Vail Symposium address and a TED talk. And I have been doing a lot of research on the state because I see the states as laboratories for social policies. My takeaway is that there are enough social progressives in the legislature, and Gov. Hickenlooper is a strong enough Democratic governor, to allow wellness oriented policies to be put in place. Colorado certainly isn’t a perfect state, but when you compare it to its neighbor Kansas, the difference is so startling it amazes me that Kansans continue to vote for the Theocratic Right fantasies of Sam Brownback and his minions