How Our Cities Were Built, and What it Means to The Future
Barnes-Gelt: For Denver, "Road to the Future" Denver Post, Sarah Barnes-Gelt, May, 17th, 2009
...We know how small-town, livable Denver morphed into Mega-Denver. The malling and sprawling of the region was symbolized by Highlands Ranch - wide streets, skinny sidewalks, front yards dominated by oversized garages and lack of buses, bike trails or neighborhood centers. Our horizontal and now unsustainable auto metropolis was the consequence of federal policy, the 1956 Federal Highway Act. The program offered metro areas 90 cents on the dollar to build a national freeway system. Denver, like most other cities, agreed, and the die was cast.
Fast-forward to the 1970s, the beginnings of Highlands Ranch and its counterpoint. Then-Gov. Dick Lamm threatened to "drive a silver stake" through the Interstate 470 beltway. This federal honey-pot again offered easy money, quick real estate plays and the American dream - an oversized garage attached to a mortgage and a back yard. Lamm succeeded in delaying the beltway, but the wrath of real estate interests and the press transformed his stake into a boomerang, thoroughly marginalizing the young governor.
While Lamm was left licking his wounds, Portland was being tempted by the same siren's song: big federal dollars to build the Mount Hood Freeway. But then-City Councilman Earl Blumenauer (now a congressman) rallied local activists to oppose speculators who were determined to demolish miles of historic urban fabric to build an eight-lane freeway through the heart of southeast Portland...
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