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POST-INDUSTRIAL APPROACHES TO URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN DENVER,

COLORADO: EVALUATING STRATEGIC NEIGHBORHOOD PLANS

LUCAS W. PALMISANO

B.A., Ohio University, 2000

A thesis submitted to the

Faculty of the Graduate School of the

University of Colorado Denver in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for a

Master of Arts

Political Science

2014

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LUCAS W. PALMISANO

iii

This thesis for the Master of Arts degree by

Lucas W. Palmisano

has been approved for the

Political Science Program

Anthony Robinson, Chair

Thaddeus Tecza

Michael Berry

Date: April 27, 2014

Palmisano, Lucas W. (M.A., Political Science)

Post-Industrial Approaches to Urban Development in Denver, Colorado: Evaluating Strategic Neighborhood Plans Thesis directed by Professor Anthony Robinson

ABSTRACT

Research has shown that neoliberal economic reforms and globalization have

helped foster a post-industrial economy in the United States. As manufacturing has fled

for cheaper labor markets, this post-industrial economy increasingly focuses on creative

and knowledge-based industries, financial sectors and related service industries, and

tourism as economic drivers. This has led to a rise of the “creative class” of labor who

specialize in these areas. A literature review has shown that city and regional strategic

plans have begun to focus on attracting these industries, the creative class and capital

investment rather than focus on building strong communities through social reproduction

strategies. This thesis will investigate whether these changes can be observed on a

neighborhood planning level by investigating strategic neighborhood plans prepared by

the Community Planning and Development department at the City of Denver.

The form and content of this abstract are approved. I recommend its publication.

Approved: Anthony Robinson

DEDICATION

I would like to thank everyone who has helped, inspired or simply put up with me along

the way in this endeavor, especially my parents and sisters, Collin, Brittany, BO, my

friends, MDCL...

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 1

II. NEOLIBERALISM AND CHANGING URBAN DYNAMICS 9

Neoliberal Economic Theory 9

Global Economic Trends and Urban Dynamics 14

Urban Planning & Community Development Efforts in the New Global Order 27

The Neoliberal Turn in Planning 35

III. DENVER: A CASE STUDY 50

Denver’s Comprehensive Plans 52

Denver’s Comprehensive Plan 2000 55

Denver’s Changing Planning Philosophy 60

The 1976-77 Five Points Neighborhood Plan 64

The 1995 Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan 67

The 2003 River North Small Area Plan 77

The 1981 Westside Neighborhood Plan 82

The 2010 La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan 87

The 1976 Cherry Creek Neighborhood Plan 94

The 2012 Cherry Creek Neighborhood Plan 97

IV. THE CHANGING FACE OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT 106

BIBLIOGRAPHY 110

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE

1. Areas of Change 67

2. Five Points Neighborhood 74

3. Northeast Downtown study area 76

4. Ballpark Historic District 80

5. River North small area conceptual plan 87

6. Land use in River North 89

7. La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood character areas 92

8. Single-head of households and areas of change 97

9. Cherry Creek Neighborhood 103

10. Cherry Creek pedestrian areas 108

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In the face of increasing globalization, how have neoliberal economic trends and

the movement towards a post-industrial economy affected the development of strategic

neighborhood plans in American urban cities? The purpose of this paper is to examine the

degree to which strategic neighborhood plans are utilized as part of an economic growth

strategy as American cities seek their place in a globalizing, post-industrial economy.

This thesis will investigate the extent to which local neighborhood plans target specific

industries, investments, development projects, and services that can be understood in the

context of cities competing for a “creative economy” place in the global marketplace. To

what extent does urban planning in this new context focus on economic development

challenges rather than on the social needs of the community?

From the 1930s to the 1960s, in accordance with Keynesian economic thought

that was highly influential at the time, planning for the social needs of the community

dominated urban development policies. This period saw urban planning departments

become more professionalized. New Deal urban development policies focused on social

programs that sought to strengthen the labor class, and expand an American middle class.

These “demand side” policies utilized progressive taxation, higher wages, worker

protections, and social safety net programs to directly support and uplift the poorest and

most downtrodden citizens. By creating the conditions for more empowered lower and

middle classes, Keynesian planning efforts sought to increase economic productivity and

lower-class buying power, and improve quality of life. It was believed these conditions

would lead to a stronger overall economy (Krugman, 2007). This planning model based

on social reproduction came to be known as “equity planning,” and is best exemplified in

the Cleveland Planning Department in the 1970s under Norman Krumholz. Krumholz

believed the duty of city planning departments should be to improve the economic and

social standing of the most disadvantaged and destitute of populations (Krumholz, 1996).

As a result of New Deal and equity planning policies, the middle class was systematically

built in a generation and the United States saw the longest sustained period of economic

growth the country has ever seen (Krugman, 2007).

In the 1970s, however, the Keynesian way of dealing with economic issues started

to crumble as the international economic playing field began to change and adapt to

globalization. Capital, labor, and cultures became “liberated” as technological advances

opened up new markets and facilitated increased travel across borders (Hackworth,

2007). Many of the changes seen nationally also fostered the capital accumulation crisis

of the 1970s. Capital accumulation refers to businesses and individuals earning a profit

from capitalist enterprises and then, in turn, using these profits (accumulated capital) to

reinvest in their business and in their quality of life. A capital accumulation crisis

emerges when profits decline and therefore pools of investment capital do not

accumulate, resulting in stagnant economic growth, declining new business starts,

business layoffs and higher unemployment, as well as declining research and

development, less savings for individuals, and declining consumer confidence (Logan &

Molotch, 1987; Judd & Fainstein, 1999; and Hackworth, 2007).

The capitalist accumulation crisis of the 1970s (America’s greatest recessionary

period since the Great Depression) coincided with a rise of an increasingly globalized

international economy (facilitated by increased connections through communication and

transportation). The United States saw manufacturing and industry leave for foreign

markets as new labor markets allowed for cheaper means to produce goods and services.

This flight of manufacturing fed into a broad-based capital accumulation crisis in

American industrial areas and cities, fueling official desires for new strategies to kick-

start local economic growth (Logan & Molotch, 1987).

To stay competitive in this troubled environment, city officials and municipal

governments changed their management style and the focus of their urban planning

efforts. Cities changed tact and focused on constantly maintaining a business-friendly

environment in which to attract investment capital (Hackworth, 2007; and Logan &

Molotch, 1987). The aim was to increase profits and tax revenues, and the belief was

eventually that some of these profits would trickle down and help the poor (Hackworth,

2007; and Logan & Molotch, 1987).

Concurrently, literature suggests cities have become growth engines of national

economies as metropolitan areas adjust to globalization and neoliberal changes (Logan &

Molotch, 1987; Galor, 1997; Friedman, 2006; Campbell & Fainstein, 1996; Hackworth,

2007; Harvey, 2012; Sassen, 2001; and Fainstein, 2010). As changes in sectors that drive

economic growth have led to moves by the United States away from manufacturing

sectors, American cities are making adjustments to best compete in a post-industrial

economy by focusing economic development efforts towards developing and attracting

creative and service-based industries (Florida, 2010). City leaders seek to attract global

capital investment in the form of new large-scale developments attractive to the “creative

class,” (Florida, 2010; and Harvey, 2012) and to market cities as tourist destinations in

order to stimulate economic growth (Judd & Fainstein, 1999; and Kriznik, 2011).

In a capitalist post-industrial society, as city leaders target creative-class

professionals and tourists, investors and developers seek to take advantage of these

changes to urban strategy, as they seek to invest their surplus capital in new profit-taking

opportunities. The rooting of surplus capital in a physical development is called the

“spatial fix” (a “fix” to the capitalist’s need to find new profit making opportunities), and

often this spatial fix is found by redeveloping post-industrial and underdeveloped areas

located in inner-city neighborhoods. This concept of fixing capital in a physical

development is not unique to the post-industrial economy. However, under neoliberal

economics, as cities seek the creative class and increasingly use tourism as an economic

driver, inner-city and low-income residents face increasing chances of seeing large-scale

developments in their neighborhoods (Judd & Fainstein, 1999; and Harvey, 2012). This

investment in large-scale urban developments often leads to new, redeveloped, and

gentrified neighborhoods that increase property values and exploit rent gaps1, allowing

for investor profit taking, which is the essence of the spatial fix.

Correspondingly, city planning efforts have shifted to a focus on planning of

medium and large-scale symbolic developments. A symbolic development project in this

new kind of neoliberal planning regime is one where developers, politicians and decision-

makers seek to remake the image and fortunes of a particular area, city or region through

the building of these projects. These projects can be used to build momentum that will

spur future development, financial commitments, and a dramatic increase in tourism

(Kriznik, 2011). Projects commonly include consumer service-based businesses such as

1 The rent gap can be described as the gap between the existing capitalized ground rent (land value) derived from the present use of a specific plot of land and the potential ground rent that could be taken if the property was redeveloped to achieve a “higher and better use” (Smith, 1987, pg. 462)

hotels, restaurants, and shops, as well as convention facilities, public parks, arts facilities,

sports facilities, and large residential complexes (Judd & Fainstein, 1999; Harvey, 2012;

and Logan & Molotch, 1987). Though cities have always built large-scale developments,

the purpose for which they are planned (to drive economic development), and the process

by which they are built (through free market, neoliberal programs), have changed.

Erecting large-scale developments has emerged as the prominent strategy used by city

planners and municipal officials to build a successful city.

As cities seek to create conditions necessary to attract investment and facilitate

large-scale development in order to capitalize on the investors’ need for a “spatial fix,”

research shows that city and regional strategic plans have adjusted to neoliberal economic

trends. City and regional strategic plans increasingly focus on the need to attract

investment to a city, rather than on social reproduction through developing and providing

social services or improving neighborhood infrastructure (Logan & Molotch, 1987; Judd

& Fainstein, 1999; Campbell & Fainstein, 1996; Hackworth, 2007; Harvey, 1989 &

2012; Sassen, 2001; Fainstein, 2010; and Blair, 2004).

This change in strategies has coincided with increasing budget allocations relating

to city and place marketing, the increased role of public-private partnerships, increased

use of enterprise zones and tax abatements, new strategies for social control over

“undesirable” social groups, and an increased role by city planning departments in

planning these large, strategic developments (Kriznik, 2011; Judd & Fainstein, 1999;

Mayer, 2007; Sites, 2007; and Blair, 2004). Thus, the role of the public urban planner has

shifted from one of designing an efficient and productive city, allocating limited city

resources, implementing cost-effective and efficient public infrastructure, insuring

adequate health care, job training, and housing programs and improving the lives of a

greater number of citizens through social reproduction strategies to a role focused almost

exclusively on economic development through creating an attractive business climate and

designing urban redevelopment megaprojects, symbolic developments, and tourist

attractions (Fainstein, 2010; Mayer, 2007; and Beauregard, 1996).

City plans, in an economy governed by neoliberal principles, focus on stimulating

economic growth through attracting global capital and investment, and through the

redevelopment of urban areas. Can we observe this broad change in urban planning

priorities at the local neighborhood level? I hypothesize that the neoliberal trend in

American cities, which reflects a broader, globalized turn to a financialized, investor-

dominated political-economy, is reflected in dynamics at the neighborhood planning

level. Although neighborhood plans have traditionally focused on such “small-scale,”

local needs as improved sidewalks, school quality, and local landscaping plans, it may be

the case today that even local neighborhood plans are increasingly reflecting a focus on

economic development strategies to attract international capital through large, strategic

developments.

The intent of this study is to examine neighborhood planning efforts of the City of

Denver to test whether or not strategic plans focused on attracting capital can be seen not

just at the state and city level, but at the neighborhood level as well. Can a change in

neighborhood planning priorities be detected over a course of recent decades, as

dominant political and economic thinking shifted from equity principles to economy

planning? In order to test this possibility the concepts of social reproduction planning

through improving neighborhood infrastructure and providing social services, as well as

neoliberal economic neighborhood planning aimed at stimulating economic growth, must

be operationally defined and systematically charted.

Research Design and Methodology

A longitudinal case study of neighborhood plans designed by the Denver

Department of Community Planning and Development will be utilized. Case study and

content analysis of the change in the overall discourse, priorities, goals, methods, and

language used in neighborhood plans of the same or similar geographic areas over a

period of 30-40 years will be examined. The comparison will include several

neighborhood plans completed prior to global changes and neoliberal reforms began in

earnest the early 1980s, as well as plans completed since. The City of Denver provides a

good case study, as the city is a good example of a growing 21st century American city

seeking to attract foreign investment and tourism (MDEDC, 2013; and Clark, 2003).

In order to measure the changes in the use of strategic neighborhood planning,

careful examination must be performed regarding a plan’s focus on social reproduction or

economic development goals. Factors of the planning efforts that will be considered in

coming to this conclusion will include: the use of marketing, branding, and advertising in

urban planning efforts; methods of financing proposed for developments in the plans2; the

use and nature of public-private partnerships; and strategic use and leveraging of public

2 Traditionally municipalities have utilized general obligation bonds (financed through taxes derived from wealth transfer from rich to poor for social reproduction programs such as schools and public works) to finance developments (Peterson, 1981). Other methods for financing increasingly adopted since the neoliberal turn in urban planning include revenue bonds (such as Tax Increment Financing, or TIF) –which can only be used to finance projects that “pay for themselves” through future revenues, since revenue bonds must be paid off by revenues from the project itself.

infrastructure and assets. Research will focus on existing plans and on neighborhoods that

have completed a number of plans over the longitudinal timeline. Examined plans will

include comprehensive citywide plans as well as individual neighborhood and small area

plans prepared by the Community Planning and Development Department of the City and

County of Denver.

A second step must include developing the parameters by which to measure the

effects of the changes in urban development planning philosophy. Allegedly, cities

increasingly are turning to economic development promotion through urban planning,

rather than supporting social reproduction through supplying basic services and

improving the quality of life for city residents. Can we measure the effects of this change

in city planning philosophy? An understanding of what services and infrastructure

projects were previously offered (and with what official planning goals), and how those

services and infrastructure are currently being provided, is needed to measure the

changes.

CHAPTER II

NEOLIBERALISM AND CHANGING URBAN DYNAMICS

This chapter includes a literature review on the scholarly work on neoliberal

economic theory and planning philosophy. Neoliberal economic theory will be contrasted

with Keynesian economic theory, global neoliberal economic trends and urban dynamics

will be investigated, urban planning and community development efforts in the new

global order will be explored, and finally a review of the neoliberal turn in planning

efforts will sum up the literature review.

Neoliberal Economic Theory

Neoliberal economic policies of the modern era have been described as a

liberalization of trade markets through the freeing of capital to flow across borders, the

reduction of state regulations and economic intervention, and limiting the scope of

government welfare and social programs (Harvey, 2005; and Friedman, 1980).

Neoliberals allege that these reforms create conditions for greater economic growth,

which will eventually create a utopian paradise that will eliminate many of the social ills

plaguing contemporary society. The concepts of neoliberalism conform well with notions

of free market capitalism, commonly theorized to work best under conditions of

liberalized trade and labor markets that allow for the free flow of goods and labor. Since

these kinds of neoliberal economic theories and ideas on free market capitalism started to

gain prominence in the 1970s, supporters of neoliberal economics (including the

neoliberal patron saint Milton Friedman himself) have aggressively pushed and enacted

neoliberal reforms in many countries around the world. These neoliberals have argued

that the role of government in general (and planning in specific) should be to create

conditions favorable to capital investors and business interests, so as to support a healthy

local economy (Harvey, 2005).

It is important to note that neoliberalism has not always dominated economic and

political thinking. In fact, there are fundamentally different ways of envisioning the

proper role of government and government planners. Following the Great Depression,

prominent economic thinkers could be divided into two camps. These were supporters of

Egalitarian Liberalism, such as President Franklin Roosevelt and John Maynard Keynes

whose views clashed with supporters of Classical Liberalism such as Friederick Hayek

and Milton Friedman. Egalitarian liberals, whose views became commonly known as

Keynesianism, have the fundamental belief that markets are not perfectly self-regulating

and they can “self-destruct without targeted intervention by various levels of

government” (Hackworth, 2007, p. 7).

The idea that a regulatory and redistributive framework is needed to reign in

capitalism, and sometimes to help capitalist systems work better than when they are

perfectly “free” to self-destruct, is based on assumptions of theoretical market failures.

These include the concept of imperfect competition – the idea that firms tend to prefer

less competition and monopoly. Additionally, some goods (such as roads and bridges) are

considered public or social goods and are collectively consumed, making them difficult

to price on an individual basis. Other failures of the market can be explained through the

concept of externalities (such as pollution or the cost of building infrastructure such as

water systems, that are not included in the market price or goods, and therefore must be

regulated or provided for by government), or when consumers possess imperfect

information – markets cannot function properly without a completely educated populace

regarding such concepts as alternative products, workplace conditions, or ingredients that

are found in the good offered for sale (Hackworth, 2007).

In addition to regulating the harsh edges of capitalism, Keynesians believe

targeted government expenditures in the economy have multiplier effects, especially if

focused on “demand side” social reproduction policies that seek to expand the middle

class and strengthen the economic lot of the labor class. These demand side policies

expand the economic buying power of the labor class through provision of jobs through

high-wage infrastructure projects, labor protections through union representation and

collective bargaining, growing benefits such as health and unemployment insurance, and

an expanding social safety net for poor and disabled people through such programs as

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (Krugman, 2007). Additionally, demand side

policies seek to narrow the wage gap between top and bottom earners through

progressive taxation, and income redistribution policies that fund social programs.

Utilizing demand side policies, FDR, President Harry Truman and other Keynesians built

the American middle class in a generation and saw the longest sustained period of

economic growth the country has ever seen (Krugman, 2007).

Classical liberals, on the other hand, believe the “highest virtue of a society is the

degree to which its individuals are allowed to pursue pleasure. Individuals are seen as the

most qualified at understanding their needs and wants, so society should be structured

around lowering barriers to the individual realization of this pleasure” (Hackworth, 2007,

p. 3). The most efficient and effective means to achieve this individualism is through a

capitalist pursuit through an unfettered market ensured by a non-interventionist state

solely focused on providing safety, competitive markets, and guaranteeing individual

rights and property (Hackworth, 2007). What has come today to be known as

“Neoliberalism” is in effect a rebirth and rebranding of this earlier version of classical

liberalism.

Many studies have shown neoliberal economic reforms have led to the opening of

new markets in Asia, Africa and the Americas; a decrease in the role in all levels of

government in the lives of citizens; and increased global competition for development

and capital investment (Leitner, Sheppard, Sziarto, & Maringanti, 2007; Mayer, 2007;

Peck & Tickell, 2007; and Friedman, 2006). While neoliberalism seeks the utopia of free

market capitalism it has “in practice entailed a dramatic intensification of coercive,

disciplinary forms of state intervention in order to impose market rule upon all aspects of

social life” (Brenner and Theodore, 2002, p. 352). This has resulted in market failures

(such as the housing crisis that precipitated the economic recession of 2008), social

polarization, and uneven development as well as “intensifying inequality, destructive

interplace competition, and generalized social insecurity” (Brenner and Theodore, 2002,

p. 352).

Neoliberalism in practice has proven to be a “historically specific, ongoing, and

internally contradictory process of market-driven sociospatial transformation, rather than

as a fully actualized policy regime, ideological form, or regulatory framework” (Brenner

and Theodore, 2002, p. 353). Initially, “roll back” neoliberalism sought to remove

regulations and social programs and shrink the size of government by essentially rolling

back the Keynesian welfare state. Next, “roll out” neoliberalism sought to bring

neoliberal economic theory further into the main stream through “concrete programs of

institutional modification through which the unfettered rule of capital is to be promoted”

(Brenner and Theodore, 2002, p. 363).

As neoliberal economic reforms have swept the globe they have combined with

increased communication and technological capacity, and the commodification of

knowledge and creative fields to drive what some call a “post-industrial” economy

(Liagouras, 2005). In this economy, increasing value is placed on so called “creative

industries” based on information, knowledge, communication, and culture as well as on

goods and services such as entertainment and tourism (Friedman, 2006; Florida, 2010;

and Liagouras, 2005). In practice, advanced economic countries that possess an

intellectual and technical superiority, such as the United States, have adapted to a post-

industrial economy by emphasizing, recruiting, and targeting growth and development of

knowledge-based and creative industries (Liagouras, 2005; Florida, 2002 & 2010; and

Hackworth, 2007). This has given rise to a “creative class” of labor who specialize in

these professional service and knowledge-based careers and are often considered young

professionals under the age of 40 (Florida, 2002). Post-industrial cities seek to attract this

creative class of labor to maintain a competitive place in the high tech, knowledge-based

economic sectors of international finance, business services, and creative industries, to

become what Sassen (2001) calls “global cities.”

As developed countries such as the United States enlist development strategies

that feature knowledge-based and creative industries, the old manufacturing sectors have

increasingly shifted elsewhere as trade is liberalized, and new markets are opened up in

developing countries; meaning that new, cheaper sources of labor have been introduced

to the global economy (Friedman, 2006; Fainstein, 2010; Hackworth, 2007; and Florida,

2010). As traditional manufacturing and industrial outputs increasingly move to

developing countries, traditional industrial powers like the United States must redefine

their economy (Bertho, Crawford, & Fogarty, 2008; Hackworth, 2007; and Florida, 2002

& 2010). It is this economic challenge – together with the rise in neoliberal, free market

thinking – that has led many American cities to emphasize strategic neoliberal planning

efforts to rebuild their cities in a way attractive to particular forms of global investment

capital, and to shift away from planning for local infrastructure, social service, education

and other social reproduction focused planning efforts.

Part of this global trend of expanding creative industries is the growth of

international finance and finance-based service industries over the last several decades.

Innovation and improvements in communication increasingly has allowed further

commodification of international finance, creating new forms of capital mobility in the

financial sector (Sassen, 2001). This increased commodification of finance, and the

growing role of international finance in shaping global development, has led to the

increasing role of global financial centers such as New York, London and Tokyo. Around

these financial centers an explosion of finance-based service industries such as

accounting, marketing, advertising, and information technology have grown (Sassen,

2001). As the financial sector has grown at higher rates than other industries, cities are

increasingly competing for these financial sector jobs and investment, as will be

discussed below.

Global Economic Trends and Urban Dynamics

Growing global neoliberal economic trends, combined with the fact that a

majority of the world’s population now lives in rapidly growing urban areas, mean that

cities are increasingly the economic growth machines for national economies (UNFPA,

2013; Logan & Molotch, 1987; and Davis, 2004). A host of studies chronicle the attempts

of cities to build tourist economic sectors, lure business interests, and attract foreign

investment and development in this new global economic order. These studies show that

what is happening on a metropolitan scale is actually a response to fundamental changes

and developments at the international level (Logan & Molotch, 1987; Judd & Fainstein,

1999; Galor, 2007; and Summer, 2006).

In a globalized economy where urban areas become growth machines driving

national economies, cities must compete against other cities for foreign direct investment

in regional, national, and international contexts (Logan & Molotch, 1987; and Judd &

Fainstein, 1999). In the face of declining manufacturing, cities compensate by seeking to

enhance their position within the international spatial division of consumption in retail

and tourism sectors as well as developing regional professional service and creative

industries (Hackworth, 2007; Judd & Fainstein, 1999; and Harvey, 2012). This pattern

has led to perceived changes in municipal economic strategies as the role of municipal

governments in a post-industrial economy has shifted to promoting economic

development, rather than focusing on social reproduction needs (Logan & Molotch, 1987;

Judd & Fainstein, 1999; and Harvey, 1989).

International neoliberal economic developments lead to local changes as urban

governments respond to global changes by increasingly adopting entrepreneurial

strategies to attract development (Harvey, 1989; and Hackworth, 2007). Entrepreneurial

actions meant to increase competitiveness, and to help urban areas gain positions as

functional centers or nodes in the global economy, include recruitment of corporate

headquarters, branches, and creative jobs, through the increased use of tax abatement and

tax increment financing strategies (i.e., business tax subsidies), expanded use of public-

private partnerships to promote local business interests, as well as a reorganization of city

planning departments around the goal of attracting economic growth (Hackworth, 2007;

Briffault, 2010; Harvey, 2012; and Beauregard, 1996).

These actions represent a change in urban strategy as cities seek to gain

competitive advantages. In the traditional Keynesian era, an emphasis in urban planning

was placed on mitigating the harsh edges of capitalism by supporting a productive and

vibrant workforce, through the provision by municipal governments of quality of life

public goods, such as low-income housing, quality public education, public works

projects, and job training (Florida, 2010; Friedman, 2006; Krugman, 2007; and Harvey,

2012 & 1996). These kinds of social reproduction strategies seek to mitigate the harsh

realities of free market capitalism as well as focus on strengthening the working class

with the belief that a stronger working class will inevitably be more productive, and this

increased productivity will result in an economy of sustained growth (Harvey, 2012 &

1996; and Krugman, 2007). Opposed to this theory that government’s role is to protect

and lift up marginalized social groups in the face of harsh capitalism, neoliberal thinkers

urge cities increasingly to strive to attract economic growth and development with the

hope that the economic benefits from business growth and large developments will have

a trickle-down effect, reach poorer citizens, and enhance their quality of life (Florida,

2010; Friedman, 2006; Krugman, 2007; and Hackworth, 2012).

As urban governing strategies have changed, the increasing commodification of

homes, neighborhoods, and public space has paralleled these changes as these spaces

increasingly become a commodity bought and sold on an open international market

(Logan & Molotch, 1987; Harvey, 2012). This internationally open marketplace adds to

the increased competition between cities as well as fosters fluctuating local housing and

property markets, as international investors seek new places to invest and develop (Logan

& Molotch, 1987).

In discussing the increased commodification of space, it is important to

understand the notion of the constant need of investors to find new ways to take new

profits. Without constant new means to earn profit, inflation eats away at capital. One

way for capital to grow is by spatially fixing capital through investment in real estate and

taking advantage of rent gaps through redevelopment. Fixing capital is nothing new.

Following the capital accumulation crisis of the Great Depression, the federal

government sought a way to strengthen the labor class by fixing capital in high-wage

public works projects.

When the redistributive and progressive New Deal public spending programs and

the sustained regulation of industry by the Roosevelt and Truman administrations,

combined with the heightened industrial capabilities resulting from the mobilization from

World War II, the United States saw a dramatic increase in high-paying union jobs and a

massive growth of the middle class. These economic changes led to the proliferation of

American manufacturing and industrial sectors, and the Keynesian means of fixing

capital through social reproduction programs and expanding the middle class held true for

most of the middle of the 20th Century (Hackworth, 2012; Florida, 2010; and Krugman,

2007).

However, in the 1970s the Keynesian way of addressing the crisis of capitalism

through enhanced regulation and social reproduction began to crumble, as the economy

was increasingly internationalized. In this international economy, capitalist investors fled

areas of high wages and high regulations (in an effort to make higher profits in lower-

wage locales), leading to a capital accumulation crisis in the old industrial centers. This

capital accumulation crisis, and the inability of traditional Keynesian means to deal with

this crisis, opened the way for new leaders with neoliberal solutions to gain power

(Hackworth, 2010; and Friedman 2006).

As the neoliberals gained power, commitments to social reproduction strategies

(such as higher education spending and high-wage public works) waned in favor of rising

calls to develop cities attractive to international investors and shoppers, such as

developing cities as tourist destinations (Galor, 2007; and Judd & Fainstein, 1999).

Developing consumer economic sectors allows cities to generate “ancillary investment,

high employment multipliers in the hospitality and retail sectors, and local tax revenues”

(Eisinger, 2000, p. 317). Tourism is a way of importing spending through visitors while

also exporting the tax burden through sales taxes or hotel room taxes (Eisinger, 2000).

Making commercial property more valuable in this way allows a city to keep residential

property taxes low while still providing services (Turner, 2002). To this end, cities

increasingly seek to develop hotels, convention centers, entertainment venues, cultural

districts, shopping opportunities, and restaurants in the hopes of attracting foreign and

domestic tourists (Judd & Fainstein, 1999).

As cities in this a post-industrial economy attempt to change fortunes through

reinvention they have resorted to the building of large-scale symbolic developments, the

use of pro-business city branding, “creative class” place promotion and signification,

legitimization of pro-growth policies, and city-wide marketing as a means to attract

foreign capital and tourist spending (Kriznik, 2011; and Ursic & Kriznik, 2012). Place

promotion strategies are adopted through the “conscious use of publicity and marketing

to communicate selective images of specific geographic localities or areas to a target

audience” (Ward and Gold, 1994, p. 2). Districts are designated as artistic, retail or

entertainment focused and a conscious effort is devoted to driving investment and visitors

to these areas.

In addition to the process of pro-creative class, pro-growth signification, the

political economy of urban development also involves the legitimization of the pro-

growth strategy by creating and mobilizing the support of stakeholders, political elites

and the public at large (Gottdiener, 1995; and Mele, 2000). There are several strategies

used by growth regimes to achieve this end. Upscale new developments such as sports

stadiums or luxury housing are marketed as serving the public good (Gottdiener, 1995;

Hubbard, 1996; Mele, 2000), and such developments are marketed as inevitable or

desirable as part of creating an attractive business atmosphere that will entice investment

and relocation of corporate entities (Kim, 2009; Holcomb, 2001; Hubbard, 1996; Short,

1999; and Ward, 1998).

This urban strategy of place-making and signification is based on two

assumptions. First, cities assume they can gain a competitive advantage over other cities

by implementing an effective management strategy, utilizing its strategic resources and

assets. The second assumption is that benefits actually accrue to most people in the city

through ancillary economic benefits (trickle-down benefits) as a result of city marketing.

In accordance with these assumptions, citywide marketing is an important part of urban

economic policy, and is used as a means to make potential tourists and investors aware of

the city’s unique competitive advantages. City marketing strategies can include the use of

flashy images, captivating slogans and sleek logos in planning documents, publicity

materials and advertisements that advance the marketing discourse, as well as more

sophisticated approaches integrating the boosting of international events and conventions

and the promotion of iconic urban projects (Gottdiener & Lagopoulos, 1986; and Kriznik,

2011).

A large amount of resources are invested in promoting a city as a place with an

attractive business climate, a high quality of life, and as a desired tourist destination.

Through attracting foreign direct investment, entertainment/sporting events, conventions,

and the relocation of corporate headquarters and branches, a city is expected to benefit

from economic growth, urban development, an increase in employment, and a better

quality of life (Kriznik, 2011; Smith, 2005; and Kim & Kim, 2011). In fact, many local

regimes believe the fate of a city’s social and economic quality of life hinges on an

effective marketing campaign (Short and Kim, 1998).

However, city marketing alone has limited success in changing the fortunes of an

urban area. Cities, therefore, construct large symbolic flagship developments that aim to

replace seemingly blighted urban areas. Through symbolic redevelopment the urban

regime seeks to replace the areas of an urban area deemed to be detrimental to the

economic growth of a city with “new places of global spectacle, transforming the former

into non-conflicting tourist attractions of mass consumption” (Kriznik, 2011, p. 295).

However, in pursuing big symbolic entertainment projects such as a sports stadium, local

growth regimes create a hierarchy of interests where concerns of visitors take precedence

to city residents. Thus tourist districts, rather than residential neighborhoods, see public

investments through city subsidies and the construction of easy transportation access or

mass-transit lines built to upscale city attractions. Other city support includes the city

provision of new parking for the venues, the rollout of a clean and well-lit physical

infrastructure, and police protection and other tools of physical separation from counter-

cultural personalities, marginalized communities, poverty, and homelessness (Eisinger,

2000).

This pattern is part of a global trend that increasingly commodifies cities, turning

them in to spaces lacking historical authenticity and meaning (Kriznik, 2011; and Urry,

2002). The emphasis of a modern city marketing strategy is more on selling constructed

images of the city and less on promoting the actual qualities of a place. Cities seek to

create a narrative of urban space as a safe and peaceful place, with no conflicts. Existing

environmental or social injustice issues are rarely addressed and can be intentionally

ignored (Kriznik, 2011). For the citizens of a city, increased tourism resulting from

symbolic development can improve the quality of life and generate employment, but it

can also lead to gentrification and social injustice through segregation of poor areas from

new developments, harsh policing practices to keep non-favored populations away from

showcase areas of the city, and the destruction of community by destroying local places

and cultures (Smith, 2002; and Kriznik, 2011).

The role of government in the production of urban space in this new system is

broad and intense. Symbolic developments are typically part of a pro-market master plan

for redesigning urban areas, and the planning of these developments is part of the way

cities are responding to neoliberal changes (Kim, 2009). As an example, sports stadiums

are held up as massive projects that provide a big boon to the city economically and

symbolically, this despite projected revenue generated from games often does not justify

the cost of building these symbolic developments. Sports stadiums are built on the

promise of the increased tax revenue generated by development of surrounding areas,

even though much of that tax revenue never materializes (Euchner, 1999).

Neoliberal governments in this kind of growth regime, share the same goals as the

real estate sector and growth regimes: uniting powerful private and public actors to

facilitate the redevelopment of property across the city to build a world-class destination

and revenue generator. To the principals of this growth regime, creating a friendly

business climate is crucial to the success of an entire region as cities compete against

each other on a global scale (Kim, 2009; and Stone, 1993). Urban renewal, however, is

rarely only about changing a particular place. It is also about how urban officials interpret

and present the results of urban renewal, the outcome and the narratives used to give

significance to a particular place. These narratives can sometimes go against the existing

narrative of a particular place and require the inherently contested sacrifice of the pre-

existing nature of particular spaces (Kriznik, 2011).

These growth regime sanctioned assaults on the needs of current communities in

the pursuit of a redeveloped “creative class” city especially affects the lowest income

residents. Increasingly, as neoliberal changes sweep across the globe, a struggle over the

right to use public spaces intensifies. As public spaces of cities become privatized and

carefully patrolled, many citizens (such as the homeless, or counter-culture personalities)

lose the ability to express themselves outside of the sanitized and regulated environment

(Mitchell, 2003; and Harvey, 2008). Social groups and individuals that do not fit or who

oppose the symbolic reconstruction of a particular place, as promoted by dominant

economic or political actors, are marginalized or excluded from public life.

In fact, as Eisenger (2000) states the focus of these growth regimes is purely

economic and low-income people are neglected:

The city as a place to play is manifestly built for the middle classes, who can afford to attend professional sporting events, eat in the new outdoor cafés, attend trade and professional conventions, shop in the festival malls, and patronize the high- and middlebrow arts. Many, if not most, of these are visitors to the city, and in the view of local leaders, they must be shielded from the city’s residents. The city is no longer regarded as the great melting pot, the meeting place of diverse classes and races (Eisinger, 2000, p. 317).

Symbolic reconstruction that results from an urban policy meant to increase intercity

competition thus becomes a new form of social and political domination, affects social

polarization, and denies political rights in cities (Kriznik, 2011; and Cho, 2010).

Brenner and Theodore (2002) sum up growth regime strategy: “the neoliberal

project of institutional creation is no longer oriented simply towards the promotion of

market-driven capitalist growth; it is also oriented towards the establishment of new

flanking mechanisms and modes of crisis displacement through which to insulate

powerful economic actors from the manifold failures of the market, the state, and

governance that are persistently generated within a neoliberal political framework” (p.

374). In fact, neoliberal strategies for redeveloping cities have severely exacerbated many

of the regulatory problems they supposedly aspire to resolve—such as economic

stagnation, high unemployment, class segregation and discrimination, and uneven

development (Brenner and Thoedore, 2002).

Paralleling this rise in consumer economic strategies, deindustrialization,

automation, and a restructuring of the labor process has resulted in a loss of union jobs

and their generous ancillary benefits. “Increasingly, ‘economies of makeshift’ are

replacing steady incomes, as labor markets are polarized between high-wage professional

employment and low-wage contingency work in the midst of massive corporate

downsizing” (Wright, 1997, p. 82). Low-class workers are shifting to consumer-oriented

service jobs in the face of these traditional union manufacturing jobs fleeing the country

(Fainstein, 2010; and Wright, 1997). As part of this growth of retail and tourism sectors

and accompanying low-wage employment, “local culture is used as part of the downtown

development strategy to draw external consumers to designated commercial areas”

(Turner, 2002, p. 545). Examples include local ethnic, artistic or cultural festivals

(marketed by local elites), celebrated in an entertainment or retail district where

additional shopping is encouraged.

As traditional manufacturing jobs are declining in many American cities, and as

cities seek to grow their position within a global consumer marketplace, increasingly

economic fortunes are also shaped by international financial activities. The deregulation

of global financial flows across the globe, expansion in available credit, and general

reorganization of core manufacturing economies towards real estate investment has been

aided by the substantial integration between property and financial markets (Hackworth,

2007; Sassen 2001). With global capital markets comes the increasing reality that local

communities are markets shaped by activities and choices outside these cities, which

leads cities everywhere to adopt changes to better attract global capital and their own

share of financial sector employment (Sassen, 2001). The leads to cities seeking to create

a good business climate through low taxes, infrastructure development friendly to the

needs of the downtown financiers, the development of “world class amenities,” and

related efforts to attract the leaders of global finance and the creative class.

Gentrification of traditional low-income communities is an associated

consequence of these neoliberal efforts to attract global capital and the related creative-

class. “It marks the replacement of the publicly regulated Keynesian inner city – replete

with physical and institutional remnants of a system designed to ameliorate the inequality

of capitalism – with privately regulated neoliberalized spaces of exclusion” (Hackworth,

2007, p. 120-121). As property markets are increasingly shaped by global investment

cycles, gentrification shows how globally connected corporate brokerage firms, rather

than individual homeowners, are increasingly taking risks and earning profits from urban

redevelopment as property and finance capital is internationalized and increasingly

deployed by corporate developers (Hackworth, 2007).

In this way, gentrification is often catalyzed not so much by the chance result of

thousands of choices by thousands of individual homebuyers and sellers, but rather is the

result of “structural speculators” (large investors, bank lenders, or local governing

officials) who strategically choose which neighborhoods deserve systematic

redevelopment and reinvestment. Local and federal government intervention in favor of

gentrification – for example, by tearing down public housing and subsidizing upscale

trophy development projects in their place – is increasingly prominent and accepted as

opposition movements become marginalized and gentrification seeps into more remote

neighborhoods (Hackworth, 2007).

This resulting politics of exclusion results in the construction of spaces of

pleasure, such as entertainment and shopping districts, supported by middle or upper-

income people living in middle or upper-class neighborhoods. Conversely low-income

areas are considered refuse spaces that developers and pro-growth elites see as ripe for

the opportunity of redevelopment (Wright, 1997). Redevelopment of low-income

neighborhoods that benefits a gentrified creative class, does not redistribute job

opportunities downward however, thus countering any perceived economic benefits for

the poor. In fact, “the consequence of city redevelopment for the very poor and homeless

is dispersion to the city periphery or to the interstices between developed city locations”

(Wright, 1997, p. 89). Redevelopment therefore reinforces these policies of exclusion,

because redevelopment is a mutually reinforcing process to economic restructuring which

acts to amplify existing social and economic inequality.

To keep the spaces exclusive, a harsh and cruel edge has been introduced to this

process. Since the 1970’s, the federal government’s “commitment to providing safe,

decent and affordable housing has gradually eroded to a practice of merely ‘containing’

the poor and homeless” (Wright, 1997, p. 83). Smith (1996) postulates that as cities seek

global capital and investment, they typically adopt “revanchist” measures to criminalize a

good deal of basic human behavior in order to promote an extreme version of cleanliness

and safety. As cities face global competition for investment capital they must promote

themselves as the most attractive place to invest. A city that is clean and safe is more

likely to attract capital, and in today’s environment, city leaders pursue such cleanliness

and safety with what Smith (1996) calls an “angry and militant revanchism,” even

involving the brutal application of police force to enforce standards of proper behavior.

For example, cities increasingly adopt ordinances making it illegal for homeless people to

sit, sleep, or even cover themselves from harsh elements. Racial profiling targets young

non-whites in downtown areas for especially harsh surveillance and policing. Episodes of

police violence against the homeless and low-income youth include such small offenses

as violating curfew (Wright, 1997).

Urban Planning & Community Development Efforts in the New Global Order

Global economic trends have had substantial influence on local urban planning

and community development efforts. A number of studies detail how recent urban

planning, neighborhood planning, and community development efforts have adjusted to

the new globalization and new economic growth dynamics detailed above (CNU, 2013;

APA, 2013; Rohe, 2009; Clay Jr. & Jones, 2009; Elkins & Sharp, 2000; Vidal, 1997).

Historically, the last century has seen a growth in urban planning efforts. Starting

with Perry (1929) and Mumford’s (1953) concept of the Neighborhood Unit, the idea of

the city neighborhood as an urban center for all human activities has been advanced

through the work of scholars ranging from Jane Jacobs (1961) to Henri Lefebvre (1991).

Rather than continue a pattern of unrestrained growth, these authors have generally

suggested that increased neighborhood planning was needed, in order to create livable

neighborhoods, improve quality-of-life, and enhance the lives of citizens in order to

create a better city (Perry, 1929; Mumford, 1953; Jacobs, 1961; and Lefebvre, 1991).

This modern increase in planning efforts was a response to the perceived failures

of the turn of the century City Beautiful movement. This movement was based on the

idea of beautifying and creating monumental majesty for a city through building wide

boulevards, attractive central parks, grand public buildings, and other public spaces. The

thought was that these architectural feats would create an atmosphere of moral and civil

virtue, positivity, and productivity that would benefit the city as a whole (Wilson, 1996).

Critics of City Beautiful, however, claimed it was “excessively concerned with

monumentality, empty aesthetics, grand effects for the well-to-do, and general

impracticality” (Wilson, 1996, p. 72). In an effort to craft a more practical urban planning

profession, the movements in city planning that followed the City Beautiful movement

benefited from increasing specialization and professionalism in the planning fields, as

well as a growing bureaucracy focused on realistic and practical city planning efforts to

improve urban living for all residents (Wilson, 1996). These efforts led to calls for zoning

rules, limits on factory location, height limits, efficient transportation, parks and

playgrounds in dense neighborhoods, and other changes such as developing master plans

for urban development (Wilson, 1996).

As the city planning profession grew and matured it became professionalized.

“Along with rationality, planners’ claim to influence was increasingly based on an ideal

of comprehensiveness - by looking at the region, city or neighborhood as a whole, they

could coordinate the different elements of urban development: land use, transportation,

production facilities, and so forth, which otherwise were the domains of separate,

noncommunicating beaucracies” (Fainstein, 2010, p. 30). Planners used modern tools of

statistical and economic analysis and were able to make policy suggestions based on

rational conclusions by examining the different systems and functions of various levels of

government, comparing alternative policies and choosing the best alternative that would

achieve the stated goals (Fainstein, 2010). This mindset led to an increase in well-

rounded knowledge for planners. Knowledge was no longer limited to just design and

training, but grew to include social science insights including sociology, anthropology,

psychology and other social sciences.

The professionalization of planning had many economic justifications for

administering and delivering public goods, such as police or fire protection, job training

or education, public transit, or the adoption of sensible regulation (such as zoning) in

order to guide private developments in a rational direction (Klosterman, 1996). Planning

was justified to regulate externalities in the market as well as mitigating “prisoner’s

dilemma” conditions in which relying on individuals pursuing their own self-interest in

the market does not lead to an optimal outcome for society at large. Underlying these

arguments is the belief that “the conscious application of professional expertise,

instrumental rationality, and scientific methods could more effectively promote economic

growth and political stability than the unplanned forces of market and political

competition” (Klosterman, 1996, p. 159).

As urban planning professionalized, it also took an equitable Keynesian turn.

Urban planning done by capable local government agencies was argued to be necessary

because the “market system cannot meet the consumption needs of the working class in a

manner capable of maintaining capitalism” (Foglesong, 1996, p. 170). The task of the

state, through equitable urban planning, is therefore to maintain a system of coordination

that supports the social reproduction needs of the working class in order to facilitate

capitalism and economic growth. The built environment of roads, bridges, sewers,

education systems, and other physical infrastructure facilitates capitalist reproduction and

planning efforts aimed at maintaining this built environment is needed in order to provide

the basis for a market in which to sell the commodities produced through capitalism

(Harvey, 1996). The role of the Keynesian equity planner must be understood in this

context. Through understanding how the built environment works in coordination with

social reproduction needs, an equity planner must “intervene in order to stabilize, to

create conditions for balanced growth, to contain civil strife and factional struggles”

(Harvey, 1996, p. 186).

The concept of planning to facilitate social reproduction advocates planning

efforts as a necessary way to mitigate some of the worst excesses of unplanned capitalist

development, and this notion of planners that engage planning in a way that regulates

markets describes many planning efforts that followed the conclusion of World War II.

Planning efforts aimed at social reproduction, combined with the increase and

diversification in knowledge, allowed planners to begin to more completely understand

the root causes of issues such as homelessness, poverty, and racism, and to attempt to

alleviate these problems through planning. In this way targeted planning efforts became a

strategy for delivering needed services to lower-income populations, and these targeted

efforts signified a growing effort in planning to specifically relieve societal ills such as

poverty or racism (Fainstein and Fainstein, 1996; & Fainstein, 2010).

As urban planning increased following World War II so did growth in targeted

community development efforts through federal programs (Rohe, 2009; and Clay Jr. &

Jones, 2009). National initiatives such as public works projects, the Housing Acts of 1949

and 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act reflect this broad

commitment to creating a more equitable process of social reproduction through

government led urban planning efforts (Rohe, 2009; and Clay Jr. & Jones, 2009). Starting

during the Truman Administration, for example, the Housing Act of 1949 changed the

direction of community development efforts by committing a large amount of national

resources to the state subsidized expansion of low-income housing. The act was viewed

as a historic “recognition of the importance of cities to our national welfare, as a

recognition of the necessity for comprehensive city planning, and for the practical

measures which it includes to assist in urban reconstruction” (Wheaton, 1949, p. 1).

The 1949 Housing Act brought the federal government into the business of

providing affordable housing, provided financing for urban slum clearance, increased

authorization for the Federal Housing Administration to provide mortgage insurance, and

provided funds for research into housing and housing techniques (Wheaton, 1949). The

1954 Housing Act further brought urban renewal into the framework as the act sought to

supplement the government provision of public housing with more commercially oriented

urban renewal projects (Flanagan, 1997), and in a way prophesized a more fundamental

turn to free-market neoliberal efforts that would come decades later. However, the act

also maintained a commitment to social equity planning goals in advanced planning

techniques such as the adoption of housing and building codes, the development of

comprehensive plans to improve low-income neighborhood conditions, the development

of administrative capacity for local planning, and by providing assistance for displaced

households (Rohe, 2009).

Under the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty and the Economic

Opportunity Act of 1964, the Community Action Program (CAP) and the 1966 Model

Cities program came into existence. These programs, partially inspired by the Civil

Rights Movement, sought further devolution of housing programs to the local level and

an increase in local participation (Clay & Jones, 2009). The CAP funds were provided

directly to community action agencies, bypassing state and local governments (Rohe,

2009). The program also required the “maximum feasible participation of the members of

groups and areas to be served” (Office of Economic Opportunity, 1965, p. 3), specifically

requiring the significant participation of low-income and non-white individuals in the

development and implementation of any planning efforts in their communities. A

crowning achievement of urban renewal and urban planning during this era was the 1966

Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act (“Model Cities”) that created

the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and provided substantial technical

assistance and grants to low-income communities for neighborhood revitalization

programs (Rohe, 2009). Additionally, these programs sought to foster the development of

comprehensive revitalization plans over the creation of strictly brick and mortar solutions

(Rohe, 2009).

This was the Civil Rights era; a time that included calls for programs that

facilitated social reproduction needs in response to the rise of consequential urban social

movements, and a progressive counter-culture (Fainstein, 2010). For example, Denver’s

official Model City Program plan (1968) that emerged during this era begins with

“Dignity! Self-respect! Self-reliance! First-class Citizenship! Equality! Justice! These are

aspirations of Denver Model City Neighborhood residents that underlie the formal

statements of the draft plan which follow” (Denver Model City Program, 1968, p. 1). A

more clear statement of a planning philosophy dedicated to social reproduction and

equity goals could hardly be drafted.

The efforts of Federal plans and policies between World War II and the 1970s,

such as the Model Cities initiative, sought to increase upward mobility of low-income

people through equitable social reproduction, and are described as the “Equity Planning”

style used by Norman Krumholz (1996), as a Cleveland planner in the 1970s. Krumholz

(1996) stated that the overriding goal of Cleveland planning policy during this era was

“to provide a wider range of choices for those Cleveland residents who have few if any

choices” (Krumholz, 1996, p. 345). The planning model was based on a philosophy that

the job of a government planner was mostly to increase the quality of life of the most

vulnerable citizens. These ideals were based on a number of factors listed by Krumholz

(1996) including the urgent reality of the conditions of Cleveland, the unfairness of the

urban development process, the inability of the local political forces to address the

situation, and the perceived moral obligations of the professional planning process.

The Equity Planning model sought to bring an activist role to city planning.

Krumholz (1996) cites the Code of Ethics of the American Institute of Planners as

justification for his activist planning philosophy. The AIP (later renamed the American

Institute of Certified Planners) Code of Ethics states “We shall seek social justice by

working to expand choice and opportunity for all persons, recognizing a special

responsibility to plan for the needs of the disadvantaged and to promote racial and

economic integration. We shall urge the alteration of policies, institutions, and decisions

that oppose such needs” (AICP, 1996). This activist planning role is articulated through

Paul Davidoff’s (1996) “Advocacy Planning” model that suggests certain groups and

special interests need advocacy in the planning process. Though any group can seek

advocacy, often the interests that need the most help are the poorest and most

marginalized (Davidoff, 1996). In contemporary discussions “Advocacy” and “Equity”

Planning are used synonymously (Fainstein & Fainstein, 1996).

Equity planning generally, and Krumholz specifically, sought to promote not just

racial diversity but also diversity of gender, sex, age, culture, and religion, as well as

counter-culture diversity as a means to provide the benefits of modern society to all

(Fainstein, 2010). These ideas have also been articulated through Lefebvre (1991) and

Mitchell’s (2003) concepts of a “right to the city.” In defending the “right to the city” by

all social groups and alternative personalities, Lefebvre and Mitchell critique more recent

(neoliberal) planning efforts that utilize tools of exclusion. These policies of exclusion

allow the benefits of society to not only be monopolized, but also allows the well-off to

hide behind the exclusion from the problems of others (Fainstein, 2010). Critiquing such

efforts, equity planners see the promotion of diversity as important for two reasons. Our

society, though made up of individuals, has an obligation to support and help others

beyond those we are related to by blood or nationality. This is the basis of tolerance of

different peoples and cultures, and the foundation of community in America. The second

part of the equity planning commitment to diversity is that “we take seriously the values

of the lives of others, including taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend

them significance” (Fainstein, 2010, p. 174).

Historically, Advocacy and Equity planners dominated government efforts from

the 1940s through the 1970s, a era defined by the kind of Keynesian governing

philosophy well expressed by Hubert Humphrey: “The moral test of government is how

that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in

the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the

needy and the handicapped” (Humphrey, 1977, p. 3728). In practice these measures in

poor neighborhoods include public works projects, health care programs, low-income

housing, job training programs, parks and recreation centers, as well as requirements for

union/living wages for city contracts, progressive taxation, and free tuition for

community college (Fainstein & Fainstein, 1996).

The Neoliberal Turn in Planning

Progressive urban social movements and expansive government-led equity

planning efforts, helped foster a capital accumulation crisis that challenged Keynesian

thinking and would eventually result in a backlash against these kind of counter-cultural

forces. This led to a subsequent rise of individualism and neoliberal ideas, voiced through

figures such as former US Senator and 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry

Goldwater (Hackworth, 2007). A reactionary response to the transformational advocacy

planning movements, and the 1970s capital accumulation crisis that followed, led to a

change in the stated goals of the populace voiced through the election of neoliberal

conservatives (Fainstein, 2010).

As stated, the capital accumulation crisis of the 1970s was a result of the system

of regulated capitalism breaking down. Arguably, armed with high redistributive taxes,

American locales faced growing competition from a global marketplace in which

employers and investors could shift production elsewhere. Investment by cities in the

high-cost social reproduction programs of the 1970s began to decline, wages became

stagnant, inflation rose, and businesses and individuals had less profits to reinvest

(Hackworth, 2007).

An example of this capital accumulation crisis can be illustrated in the experience

of New York City in the mid 1970s. The State of New York, where avowed Keynesian

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as governor, is the birthplace of municipal

liberalism and regulated capitalism, exemplified in the municipal government of New

York City in the early 1970s. Over several decades and several mayoral administrations,

the City of New York developed an expansive city budget as a result of generous welfare,

education and social service provisions for city citizens that accounted for approximately

55% of the City’s budget at the time of the fiscal crisis (Stein, 1976; and Siegel, 1997).

These welfare expenditures included low-cost rental housing and cheap public

transportation (that made the city attractive for low-income populations), as well as a

city-managed public school district and a tuition-free university system. Many of these

expenditures were mandated by city ordinances or state laws and the city paid a higher

percentage of these costs as compared to other large urban cities in other states (Stein,

1976; and Siegel, 1997).

Additionally, New York City unions had extensive power and benefits, and the

city had the highest number of city employees per capita when compared to other large

urban cities (Stein, 1976; and Siegel, 1997). The city also had a higher than average

income tax burden when compared to surrounding states such as New Jersey and

Connecticut as well as a shrinking tax base as the city had seen a decline in

manufacturing and population. Debt services and public pension benefits accounted for

the rest of the city’s mandated expenditures. The city relied on short-term municipal

bonds as a means to finance these services aimed at social reproduction, moving away

from strictly using such bonds to cover capital expenses such as infrastructure and

individual construction projects, marking a change in how municipalities used bonds.

This change resulted in the city fiscally overextending, and eventually the city was placed

in receivership (McMahon & Seigel, 2005).

As a result of this fiscal crisis, and after being denied federal assistance by the

Ford Administration, neoliberal reforms were forced on the city. New York City cut

services, privatized services (such as trash collection), charged fees for previously free

services (such as university education and health care services), shrank public

employment, and sold off public assets (such as the city’s TV and radio stations) as well

as transferred certain services from city to regional, state or federal responsibility (such as

welfare, health care, highways, and public transit) (Stein, 1976; and Seigel, 1997).

During this time benign neglect and planned shrinkage were two similar

neoliberal planning strategies that gained prominence in New York. “Benign neglect,” a

phrase coined by Nixon advisor and future New York US Senator Daniel Moynihan, is

the free-market policy that advocated a do-nothing approach to dealing with social

problems in low-income and minority neighborhoods, in the hopes that problems would

take care of themselves (Wallace, 1998). Specifically, Moynihan advocated a tiered-

priority approach with how the New York Fire Department used limited resources, to

avoid engaging the supposed persistent threat of arson in poor neighborhoods. In reality,

Moynihan advocated a preference for focusing resources in middle and upper-class

neighborhoods rather than minority and low-income areas. Similarly, “planned

shrinkage” is the policy of actively cutting services from low-income neighborhoods,

forcing low-income residents to move to other areas, and leaving these neighborhoods

blighted. This policy then allows private developers to come to these blighted areas and

redevelop them into sports stadiums, tourist bubbles, cultural districts, upscale residential

and other spaces of consumption (Wallace, 1998).

On a national scale, when the capital accumulation crisis of the 1970s combined

with escalating demands for increased social programs that were seen as growing out of

hand by many, and with a growing popular rebellion against seemingly unresponsive and

unsustainable Federal government programs, and ultimately resulted in conservative

electoral victories; the result was policies favoring deregulation, federal decentralization,

shrinking of federal programs, decreased budgets for social reproduction and welfare

programs, and a greater reliance on free market solutions (Hackworth, 2007; & Fainstein,

2010). This period saw technological advances that facilitated the global flow of capital,

an increase in the market share of the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) sectors, as

well as inner urban devalorization and continued physical expansion of the metropolis

(Hackworth, 2007). These factors combined to foster a change in urban planning efforts

that turned away from advocacy planning, and became focused on single-track economic

growth, in order to secure global competitiveness (Fainstein, 2010).

As conservative figures gained electoral success and neoliberal economic theories

started to gain traction, the role of the federal government in urban renewal changed as

well. As noted, beginning with 1954 Housing act (which undermined the 1949 Housing

Act’s commitment to low-income housing as a means of social justice rather than

economic profit), and continuing into the 1970s, Federal housing programs increasingly

focused on commercially oriented solutions (Clay & Jones, 2009; Rohe, 2009; and

Fainstein, 2010). In 1971, President Nixon, a conservative, abolished the Office of

Economic Opportunity created in 1964 (the institutional vehicle for the war on poverty),

and cut many of the social programs championed during the Johnson administration

(Rohe, 2009).

The administration of conservative President Gerald Ford terminated the Model

Cities program in favor of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program

(Rohe, 2009). This program increasingly focused on giving more control to local officials

over how federal poverty-fighting dollars were spent, supported private market solutions

as a means to implement Federal goals, and released cities from Model Cities Program

era requirements that planning efforts specifically improve the living conditions for low-

income people, and include low-income people in the process of planning (Clay & Jones,

2009; and Rohe, 2009). The CDBG program instead allowed local government to use

funding meant to combat poverty as a block grant with few conditions on use. This meant

that efforts to combat poverty became dominated by big business solutions that promised

to benefits that would trickle down to the poor, but which were less directly beneficial to

people in poverty (Clay & Jones, 2009; and Rohe, 2009).

As an example of the fundamental difference in approach between the 1960s-

1970s War on Poverty approach to equity planning and the post 1970s shift to supply-

side economy planning, changes in Denver planning practices are instructive. During the

Denver Model City Program era, the well-known “brown power” activist Corky Gonzales

actually led anti-poverty efforts as the federally-funded director of Denver’s war on

poverty programs. Gonzales, who himself rose out of the low-income Latino barrio and

who later became the leader of the grass-roots “Crusade for Justice,” focused on social

reproduction strategies such as low-income housing policies, job training, and other

investments in impoverished communities (Vigil, 1999). When Community Development

Block Grants replaced Denver’s Model City Program, on the other hand, radical leaders

like Corky Gonzales received less government support while projects such as Colorado’s

Ocean Journey (an expensive downtown entertainment venue) were financed with CDBG

money and marketed as a means to fight poverty, through trickle down economic growth

(Robinson, 2013).

Also at this time, as national policies embraced neoliberal theory, urban planning

followed suit, moving to more entrepreneurial models, leading to less focus on social

reproduction. This was a self-reinforcing model as entrepreneurial changes in the federal

government basically forced municipalities to follow suit. “Local governments are now

not only expected to ally with business to improve its plight, they are also increasingly

expected to behave as businesses as well. In addition to shrinking during recessions (as

opposed to the Keynesian tendency to expand during such episodes), local governments

are more keenly pressured to produce tax revenue generators than before” (Hackworth,

2007, p. 26).

As a result, urban governments have increasingly focused on growth-promoting

policies as a means to stay competitive, claiming that growth-promoting policies result in

the greatest good for the greatest number of people. For example, by the late 1970s urban

municipalities began using their sub-market rate debt-raising capacity to secure low-cost

loans to support a growth of homeownership. While some of these loans went to middle-

class homeowners, often the beneficiaries were highly capitalized, increasingly national

and international developers and corporations (Hackworth, 2007).

The economic changes brought on by the 1970s capital accumulation crisis,

growing discontent with larger federal programs perceived as ineffective, increasing

globalization, a backlash towards the counter-culture of the 1960s, a rise of conservative

ideology, and the harnessing of Nixon’s silent majority created a perfect storm. Ronald

Reagan, an upshot who challenged sitting President Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican

presidential primary, harnessed his communication skills and rode the wave of discontent

into the White House in 1981. His rise, paralleled by a similar rise of British conservative

Margaret Thatcher, led to a global shift in urban centers from Keynesian egalitarian

liberalism to Neoliberalism’s revival of classical liberalism, the effects of which are still

being felt today (Peck and Tickell, 2007).

According to Fainstein (2010), urban renewal programs since World War II have

been framed as a battle between two forces: growth (the core value of neoliberal urban

planners) and equity (the core value of Keynesian equity planners). These battles “can

take the form of downtown versus the neighborhoods; demolition versus preservation;

community stability versus population change; institutional expansion and subsidized

construction of sports facilities versus investments in social housing, education, or

community facilities; expressway construction versus public transit; megaevents versus

locally oriented festivities” (Fainstein, 2010, p. 80-81). Equity planning is the latter,

economic planning is the former. Fainstein (2010) notes that a focus on economic

growth, often through tax abatements or other tax relief and subsidy programs, regulatory

reductions, TIFs, and other means, usually results in less and less benefits that transfer

down to the neighborhoods and to lower-income people. The preference in a planning

philosophy focused on growth, is in flashy, iconic investments such as convention

centers, luxury housing and sports stadiums, as opposed to soft investments in areas of

human capital such as education and job training (Fainstein, 2010).

As noted, politicians, planners, and local elites justify large-scale trophy

development projects as a means to enhance competitiveness. Even decisions over the

allocation of traditional means of social reproduction such as parks or cultural facilities

are rationalized based on the potential to raise property values, attract businesses and

investment, and entice tourists, rather than as a strategy to serve the human needs of

marginalized populations (Fainstein, 2010).

Much of the change in urban planning methods from social reproduction models

to ones that promote economic growth, are reflected in the work of former Denver City

Planning Director Jennifer Moulton. In her widely circulated defense of Economy

Planning, Ten Steps to a Living Downtown, Moulton (1999) cites changing demographics

(specifically an increase in young professionals), and urges the use of local public policy

to direct economic and demographic changes into a move of the populace back in the

central city (Moulton, 1999). Moulton advocates that “in conjunction with private

business initiatives, local government can help accelerate potential into action by

educating, providing incentives and removing regulatory obstacles” (Moulton, 1999, p. 9)

as well as through policies that support benign neglect and planned shrinkage of low-

income neighborhoods.

Specifically, Moulton advocates two particular actions. First, the local

municipality can seek to attract growth and investment by providing an environment that

seems inviting. This can be found by providing a “comfortable, safe place” (Moulton,

1999, p. 10) with direct access to food, shopping and services, as well as by providing

neighbors and a place to play. These areas must be clean and safe from threats and crime

(Moulton, 1999). In order to do this, the current population must be controlled and tamed,

or removed. Second, downtown areas must offer an investment motive for home

ownership, so that people with money to spend on housing can be confident that their

property values will rise. Providing housing options downtown is seen as a cornerstone to

redeveloping a thriving downtown, and home ownership is a must in order to attract the

higher value residents who seek home ownership as a motivating factor and an

investment opportunity (Moulton, 1999). In Moulton’s analysis, capital investment is the

driving factor in the development of a thriving downtown neighborhood.

Moulton’s language even mirrors the revanchist sentiment described by Smith

when she says that after the flight of upper income residents to the suburbs in the 1970s

and 1980s, low-income “downtown residents were those who were unwanted as

neighbors anywhere else” (Moulton, 1999, p. 7). She refers to inner-city neighborhoods

as “an intimidating moat” (Moulton, 1999, p. 18) of low-density and low-income

residential communities that prevent middle class suburban visitors and shoppers from

getting downtown. Moulton’s defense of economy planning as a strategy to transform

these “intimidating moats” of low income communities became widely circulated through

urban planning departments through the 1990’s (and was featured prominently by think

tanks such as the Brookings Institute), and well represents the broader turn in planning

towards strategic planning efforts to attract more investment and to develop tourism,

upper-income neighborhoods, and a creative-class demographic as a strategy for global

competitiveness (Pammer, 1998; Gallent & Robinson, 2012; Blair, 2004; and Simpson,

2010).

As Economic Planning has grown and thrived, planning models increasingly

borrow methods used in the corporate world. Common planning tools now include

creative financing through tax increment financing (TIF) and business improvement

districts (BIDs), entrepreneurial governing styles, the use of marketing and branding of a

citywide image, place signification, and legitimization of regime goals. Place

signification is an active strategy by city governments and planning agencies to build and

create a tourist-centered space of consumption that is marketed as a hip, popular place at

which to be seen, in order to drive focused consumer traffic leading to higher tax

revenues. The same marketing tools are used to legitimize developments by creating a

sense of proper and progressive inevitability for these polices and projects (Kriznik,

2011; Gottdiener, 1995; and Mele, 2000).

The increased use of tax increment financing (TIF) shows entrepreneurial

governing methods when it comes to financing, in that this model depends on increasing

property values in order to generate the increased tax revenues needed to subsidize

developers. To utilize TIF financing, cities must designate areas as “blighted” under most

state’s enabling legislation, and TIFs then create a special taxing district that directs

future property taxes in a district to fund the up-front costs of new developments that

themselves are responsible for driving up property values and therefore generating the

rising property taxes that pay for the development itself. The “increment” available to

fund tax increment financed projects is determined by the difference between property

values at time of blight determination and property values in the subsequent 20-25 years

after a development occurs. Tax increment financing dedicates most, or all, of this

incremental growth in property tax revenues back to the developer who built the project

that catalyzed the rising property values to begin with (Weber, 2002).

Tax Increment Financing can be compared to general obligation bonds (used by

government to support projects with general tax dollars such as libraries, schools, and

parks) and backed by the full faith and credit of the issuer, including the power of the

municipality to tax its citizens. Whereas TIF projects (the dominant form of urban

renewal funding today) depend on supported projects being financially feasible and

generating their own rising property values and sales tax revenues to pay for themselves,

general obligation bonds fund projects with city-wide taxation and projects need not be

financial money-makers, as TIF projects do. In that way, the shift away from general

obligation bonds and towards TIF financing represents a broader shift away from social

reproduction planning strategies (funded with General Obligation revenues) and towards

economy planning strategies (which are financed by revenues from the redeveloped

projects themselves) (Weber, 2002).

TIFs have primarily been used for large-scale symbolic developments and in

gentrifying neighborhoods “bypassing the slow-turnover parts of the city where there is

little hope of generating additional property taxes” (Weber, 2002, p. 535). These areas are

often low-income public housing, obsolete public facilities (such as an outdated hospital

complex), or vacated industrial areas, and are sometimes taken through eminent domain.

These areas are then gentrified into a hot, new cultural district or entertainment

development. As a means to generate revenue, the current use of TIFs supports the

“entrepreneurial state’s involvement in place marketing, tourism, historic preservation,

and beautification” (Weber, 2002, p. 535). The expanded use of TIFs show that this

financing method has expanded to most types of development rather than to its original

use to redevelop blighted areas (Briffault, 2010).

Initially, blight was determined to be a legitimate condition necessary to destroy

and replace the built environment in order to prevent crime and disease. But following

the 1954 Housing Act, cities were able to expand their use of blight to areas where there

was a future potential for blight. Over the following decades “obsolescence” was

determined to meet many states’ requirement of blight. Obsolescence is when a particular

structure becomes old and outdated (such as a structure with high ceilings that lead to

high energy costs), but is not necessarily “blighted.” Obsolescence tends to suppress

rental income and exchange values (the ability to sell a property for a healthy profit) but

not necessarily utility or use values (the ability to healthily live in a property) (Weber,

2002). Using blight and (especially) obsolescence standards in this way to justify

wholesale demolition and redevelopment of communities, “urban renewal pulverized the

inner city in the middle of the century, funneling billions of federal dollars into costly

downtown commercial projects, highways, and sanitized streetscapes” (Weber, 2002, p.

528). From 1949-1964 urban renewal projects resulted in the eviction of over a million

mostly low-income people as a means to prevent urban decay and blight.

As noted, other changes following the 1970s included increasing global

investment, a decreasing manufacturing sector in terms of economic production and jobs,

a growth of financial and real estate sectors, an increase in speculative investment,

increased communication, and an increase in the speed of “financial resources churning

rapidly within the system” (Weber, 2002, p. 529). Real estate became “progressively

dematerialized and deterritorialized” (Weber, 2002, p. 529) as urban leaders and property

speculators sought to attract highly liquid and mobile global capital. Investment became

detached from the sense of place real estate inherently possesses. This development was

actively facilitated and supported by all levels of government as they sought competitive

advantage through regressive tax strategies, tax abatements and shelters, and land

giveaways. Additionally, the secondary mortgage market of securitized debt aided in the

increasing deterritorialized real estate market.

Whereas blight allowed earlier Keynesian redevelopment to focus on assisting

victims, obsolescence and a deterritorialized real estate market led to redevelopment

without having to deal with local social responsibilities (Weber, 2002). As opposed to

addressing the needs of impoverished communities directly, Economy Planning places

importance on developing “world class” cultural assets in modern urban development

strategies (Weber, 2002), and cities must leverage these world-class cultural attractions

and amenities in order to thrive (Moulton, 1999). This is part of the effort to improve a

city’s attractiveness to global investors and the creative-class, thereby spurring more city

development (Sirgy & Cornell, 2002; and Rosenstein, 2011).

In reality, these cultural assets tend to be concentrated in downtowns and in

cultural districts and away from neighborhoods. This shift to “world class” trophy

developments, therefore, leads to the existing assets of local communities going under-

recognized and being insufficiently supported (Rosenstein, 2011). These geographically

centered cultural districts can become “tourist bubbles” (Judd and Fainstein, 1999) as

these areas are marketed towards suburban visitors and tourists through local arts

commissions, film and music offices, and visitors and convention bureaus; and carefully

segregated and protected from unsightly images of poverty (such as homeless

encampments or low-income neighborhoods) or marginal personalities (such as

unlicensed street performers and vendors or collections of loitering young non-white

men) (Wright, 1997; and Smith, 1996).

As Eisinger eloquently states:

Thus it is all too common for a city to use its scarce resources not to build infrastructure, fund youth recreation programs, subsidize homeless shelters, or enrich the schools but to help wealthy investors construct entertainment facilities for well- off visitors who produce few payoffs for residents. When local leaders fail to calibrate

public expenditures to public returns and speak instead of creating a “big-league” image or a “world-class” city as a way of justifying expenditures on entertainment amenities, then it is fair to conclude that they are offering their constituents not the best basic services that have long been core municipal responsibilities but rather the thin sustenance of bread and circuses (Eisinger, 2000, p. 331).

This narrow focus by growth regime elites on developing world-class amenities and

upscale downtown neighborhoods tends to crowd out efforts to support the lives of

everyday residents and low-income neighborhoods, as these peripheral neighborhoods are

not well integrated into broader policy decisions by local elites (Logon and Molotch,

2007; and Rosenstein, 2011).

Further, as Moulton (1999) desired, downtown residential neighborhoods are now

being designed to stimulate commercial development rather than to stabilize the existing

populace (through building affordable housing or provision of services) as successful

downtown development is seen as a means to improve the lot of commercial business.

“Financed with public subsidies, private development companies are rapidly transforming

downtown areas into middle-class consumer landscapes with expensive shopping

districts, luxury townhouse, franchise shops, and entertainment complexes, often at the

expense of the city’s poorer clients” (Wright, 1997, p. 87).

The development of these projects coincides with a loss of public space, as the

use of such development districts seeks to leverage public authority over the area for

private gain (Summer, 2006). Creating upscale districts like this is a way to encourage

consumer spending in urban areas through marketing and the direction of resources while

also allowing for the private provision of safe and clean environments, and for measures

that seek to keep poor people out. Thus, “public planning is not empowering if it serves

only to privatize space and use public authority for social control of that space” (Turner,

2002, p. 544).

In these ways, Economy Planning seeks to create a vibrant city that can attract

suburban and foreign tourist spending through marketing & branding, strategic capital

expenditures, and urban design standards, as well as by seeking to attract creative

industries and creative-class workers (Calthorpe, 1993). However, economic planning

policies that have evolved to support tourism and the creative economy also encourage

gentrification and incentivize urban real-estate development that has led to an

undermining of diversity, strength, and vibrancy in urban neighborhoods (Rosenstein,

2011; and Peck & Tickell, 2007).

The remainder of the this study will provide on a case study of Denver planning

efforts to illustrate how these global trends towards neoliberal economic planning, as

cities seek to gain a competitive place in the post-industrial economy, are reflected in on-

the-ground changes in local urban planning efforts. The case study will show that not

only do these global trends affect citywide planning policies, but they also shape

individual neighborhood planning efforts.

CHAPTER III

DENVER: A CASE STUDY

The City of Denver, Colorado provides an excellent opportunity to study the

neoliberal turn in community planning efforts on a neighborhood level. The City of

Denver has been actively seeking a place in a post-industrial economy through strategic

planning efforts to target creative and knowledge-based industries and workers, as well as

to develop a thriving tourism sector. Denver’s planners have been leaders in national

planning networks, as represented by the influential work of Director of City Planning,

Jennifer Moulton in 1990s, whose defense of “economy planning” was featured

nationally by the Brookings Institute (Moulton, 1999) and whose thoughts are commonly

cited by scholars and planners nationwide as representing the “economy planning” mood

(see, for example, Gibson’s 2004 work, Securing the Spectacular City). Additionally,

Denver’s Community Planning and Development Department has produced a large

number of community and neighborhood plans that will provide the basis of this

examination.

Several community development plans for my study time exist for Denver

neighborhoods. These plans include citywide comprehensive plans, neighborhood plans,

corridor plans, as well as special district plans from the 1970s to the present day. This

study will compare comprehensive plans from 1977 and 2000 as they set the stage for the

development of neighborhood and small area plans within the study area. Next,

neighborhood plans for three specific neighborhoods will be compared and discussed.

Comparing these plans will serve as a means to understand the differences over time as

neighborhood planning efforts have adapted to developments such as globalization,

neoliberal economic trends, and an emergence of a post-industrial economy in Denver.

The contention of this paper is that neighborhood plans created by the Denver

Community Planning and Development Department prior to a neoliberal turn in the mid-

1980s focused primarily on social reproduction. These neighborhood plans served as

supplements to the 1977 Comprehensive Plan. The planning efforts of these plans were

explicit in their mission to protect, stabilize, and encourage healthy residential

neighborhoods through provision of housing, service delivery, and protecting the

character of the neighborhoods. These social reproduction goals can be measured by the

degree to which new housing developments advocated in plans were meant to provide

suitable housing and a decent living environment to all citizens and by the degree to

which economic development encourages in the plan focus on local business, small

business and complement residential neighborhoods.

In Denver, the 1986 Downtown Denver Plan and the 1989 Comprehensive Plan

marked a turning point in the nature of planning efforts. Further, the Comprehensive Plan

of 2000 codified the neoliberal turn in planning efforts, as new neighborhood and small

area plans prepared as supplements to the 2000 Comprehensive Plan offered up goals and

strategies that reflect their effort to adapt to changing economic times, including the

challenges of globalization, as well as advances in communication and other technology.

The focus of neighborhood planning efforts that followed the neoliberal turn in the 1980s

increasingly had a single-track focus on economic development through attracting capital

investment, post-industrial economy activity, and the creative class. These plans still

include a focus on housing development and service delivery, but as the case study will

show, these resource allocations are part of a coordinated strategy focused on leveraging

upscale economic development. As will be detailed, neighborhood plans prepared by

Denver’s Community Planning and Development Department following the neoliberal

economic turn contain portions aimed at growing cultural tourism, building symbolic

flagship developments and place promotion, as well as a general aim to create pedestrian

oriented places and spaces to attract the mobile “creative class.”

As both citywide and neighborhood plans are investigated, the format for

discussion will follow a similar design. Each set of plans, one from before the neoliberal

turn and one from after, will be juxtaposed, by investigating language and descriptions of

the goals, visions, and priorities of the plans as well as the strategy to implement these

actions. This analysis will include an examination of sections concerning land use,

transportation, urban design and other sections concerning the built environment of both

generations of plans. Finally, comparing and contrasting each plan’s focus on social

reproduction versus economic development goals will conclude each comparison.

Denver’s Comprehensive Plans

The City of Denver has periodically released a comprehensive plan that seeks to

guide the development of the city over a long-term period of twenty or more years. In

order to measure the effect on neighborhood planning efforts resulting from national and

international changes in global finance and trade liberalization as the United States moves

to a post-industrial economy, a detailed look at Denver’s comprehensive plans from both

eras will prove useful. Comprehensive plans are guiding documents that steer future

decisions by political elites, business and development interests, neighborhood groups,

and others. These documents set up the framework for the development of neighborhood

and small area plans that serve as supplements to the comprehensive plan. For that reason

the 1977 document Planning Toward the Future: A Comprehensive Plan for Denver as

well as the Denver Comprehensive Plan 2000 and its accompanying document Blueprint

Denver (2000) will be investigated. The plans’ organizational structure and content

sections are nearly the same. However the 2000 documents, unlike the 1977 document,

also include detailed sections on economic development (which is suggestive of the

broader shift to economy planning between the 1970s and more recent decades).

In 1977, the document Planning Toward the Future: A Comprehensive Plan for

Denver was created as a response to the critical issues of the day. This plan was heavily

influenced by regional, national, and international concerns regarding energy production

and the environment. The 1977 Comprehensive Plan was focused on creating and

maintaining stable neighborhoods through providing the built environment of roads and

bridges, schools and public health facilities, police, fire and other services. The 1977 plan

sought to strengthen the labor class and social base through social reproduction measures

and programs. The 1977 plan had such a uniform focus on local and regional issues that it

does not specifically mention global competition at all.

The 1977 plan follows a model of equity planning through social reproduction by

utilizing federal, state and local government actions, programs and solutions to stabilize

all Denver neighborhoods, including lower-income communities. This includes

developing coordinated improvement programs for deteriorating neighborhoods, creating

conservation programs, supporting neighborhood housing services programs, job training

programs, and utilizing other service provision programs to significantly improve

residential neighborhoods that were beginning to decline (Comprehensive Plan 1977).

The utilization of government programs and investment is not unique to one plan or the

other, however the 1977 plan focused on taking advantage of government programs

aimed at affordable housing, service provision, and promoting and developing residential

neighborhoods rather than pursuing programs focused on economic development.

In reference to housing strategy, the 1977 plan advocates programs to conserve

Denver’s housing stock by offering incentives for homeowners and landlords who update

and upgrade their property, and by encouraging homeownership as a means of improving

the economic lot of residents (Comprehensive Plan, 1977). The vision of the plan is

simple as the plan states that “it is recognized that poor housing conditions are related to

insufficient household income to buy or rent sound housing; therefore, the overall

strategy must address the providing of jobs or better jobs for low-income people”

(Comprehensive Plan, 1977, p. 17). The plan continued “housing should be provided on a

non-discriminatory basis so that people can obtain housing in any part of Denver without

regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin” (Comprehensive Plan, 1977, p.

22). This quote shows the equity planning efforts also included combatting discrimination

and prejudice.

Though both plans contain sections dealing with social reproduction measures,

the 1977 plan had few components that deal with economic development. The 1977 plan

did advocate generally supporting business expansion and relocation to Denver as a

means to provide needed services and jobs, but in a clear advocacy of equity goals, the

plan specifically stated that developers should “equitably participate in the provision of

needed public facilities” (Comprehensive Plan, 1977, p. 15).

Though the 1977 plan’s section on public facilities called for providing public

services because “it protects the public interest with sound investments that offer benefits

over a period of many years, and it serves as a catalyst for private development in the

city” (Comprehensive Plan, 1977, p. 57), the plan notes that these investments should be

“quality public facilities appropriately located and equitably distributed to all segments of

the population” (Comprehensive Plan, 1977, p. 57). This focus, as we will see, is a

different strategy from how the 2000 Comprehensive Plan allocates resources.

Additionally, the equitable 1977 plan specified, “an economic development

strategy for Denver must recognize that one of Denver’s prime economic resources is its

people and their potential” (Comprehensive Plan 1977, p. 27). The plan went on to say

these equitable planning efforts “would also help to increase the demand for retail goods

and services, and create jobs for present residents, especially unemployed and

underemployed low-income people” (Comprehensive Plan, 1977, p. 27). Like other

sections of the 1977 plan, the space devoted to economic development, in addition to

highlighting the need for equity, included themes favoring preserving residential

neighborhoods, strengthening the social base and skilled labor force through a strong

education system, providing jobs and job training, and providing adequate public

services.

Denver’s Comprehensive Plan 2000

The 2000 Comprehensive Plan similarly responds to issues of the day, and has

similar goals and priorities of improving the quality of life for residents and businesses.

However, the 2000 plan’s opening language is indicative of the change in the scope of the

plan. While the 1977 plan was focused on maintaining Denver’s edge as the regional

capital for business, investment, population and culture, the 2000 plan seeks to extend

this reach to national and international levels. As stated in the 2000 plan, “Denver must

capitalize on its unique geographical opportunity as a national transportation and

technology center, the gateway to the Rocky Mountain recreation and natural resources

empire, the nation’s most central port of the air age, and the most populous western

intersection of the interstate highway system” (Comprehensive Plan, 2000, p. 6). This

expansion to national and international markets reflects the City’s response to global

changes in communication and trade liberalization, as well as Denver’s response to the

competitive nature that pits cities against each other in competition for foreign

investment.

The priorities of the 2000 plan, however, differ from the older plan as it states that

encouraging “economic activity will remain a top priority in the early 21st century… in

2000, the challenge is to sustain and spread a strong economy. A strong economy will not

sustain itself without strategic planning and action, and without aggressive economic

development there will be no partnerships of the City with the private business sector and

metropolitan, state and national governments” (Comprehensive Plan, 2000, p. 123). As

can be seen from this quote, the clear focus of this plan is on stimulating continued

economic development and growth.

The 1989 Denver Comprehensive Plan, which first included a detailed section on

economic development and upon which the 2000 comprehensive plan builds, targeted

eight economic sectors on which to focus economic development efforts, including:

telecommunications, tourism, international trade, health care, insurance, higher

education, retail, and business and financial services (Comprehensive Plan, 2000). Since

1989, the economy shifted from one of high regional unemployment to one with a

skilled-labor shortage and as the 2000 plan notes, the service sector of Denver’s economy

became the largest employment area with a third of all workers falling into this category

(Comprehensive Plan, 2000). The regional economy also saw an increase in government

jobs and a decrease in traditional manufacturing, mining, and agriculture. These

economic changes reflect national and international economic changes as manufacturing,

mining and agriculture have declined and have been replaced by telecommunications,

tourism, international finance and the relating service industries that accompany these

sectors.

As these changes in regional economic sectors have transpired, a changing vision

for Denver and the metropolitan area has also occurred. As the 2000 plan states:

“Through thoughtful planning, significant public and private investment, and active

historic preservation, Downtown Denver has redefined itself from a daytime workplace to

a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week neighborhood with world-class amenities, many of them

built in the 1990s (Comprehensive Plan, 2000, p. 125). These world-class amenities,

many publically funded, include Coors Field (a baseball stadium), the Pepsi Center (a

basketball and hockey arena), Mile High Stadium (a football stadium), the Colorado

Convention Center, and the Denver Performing Arts Complex as well as significant

investment in public transportation through T-Rex (an expansion of a major highways

coupled with the addition of light rail lines along the corridors) and FasTracks (six

additional passenger rail lines).

These investments have led to a booming downtown as restaurants, nightclubs, art

galleries, retail, movie theaters and other entertainment options have established or

relocated to the area. The 2000 plan takes notice of the added economic benefits to the

downtown area as event goers add dinner, drinks or shopping to attendance of a sporting

or cultural event in the area (Comprehensive Plan, 2000). According to the 2000 plan,

creating this vibrant and cultural 24-hour world-class city is crucial to developing an

attractive brand as the city seeks a growth in tourism and retail sectors.

The partner document to the 2000 Comprehensive Plan is Blueprint Denver.

Blueprint Denver (2000) is focused on land use and planning, and serves as a supplement

to Denver Comprehensive Plan 2000. The central framework of Blueprint Denver (2000)

is designating places as Areas of Change, where new development will be directed, and

Areas of Stability, where efforts are meant to solidify the current neighborhood

dynamics. The Areas of Change (Figure 1) are predominantly low-income areas.

Both Denver Comprehensive Plan 2000 and Blueprint Denver (2000) recommend

completing neighborhood and area plans for these Areas of Change as a means to guide

future growth (Comprehensive Plan 2000, 2000). The 2000 plans specifically move away

from planning that seeks to sustain low-income communities, and instead aim to

transform, convert and gentrify these communities into something that is new, fits the

“world-class” brand, and drives economic growth.

The 2000 plan follows the economic planning model as it prescribes land use

decisions that specifically target low-income communities for “change,” and because the

plan is built around “invest(ing) in public infrastructure and amenities strategically to

promote community identity and attract development” (Comprehensive Plan, 2000, p.

98). Proposed strategies include directing investment towards primary arterials through

Figure 1. Areas of Change

landscaping and streetscaping, investing in significant intersections and gateways to the

city, and creating consumer-oriented districts and public spaces that entice visitors with

event and theater venues, public parks and spaces, and retail. These strategies combine

with a city-promoted brand to market a vibrant and enticing image of the city that seeks

to attract both tourists seeking urban experiences and creative-class young professionals

seeking an urban lifestyle. While strategically targeting public investments is not new to

the 2000 plan, the 2000 plan specifically directs the public sector to use public

investments to develop a climate that attracts private investment and creates opportunities

for “economically rewarding” development (Blueprint Denver, 2000). This marks a

major break away from the 1977 document.

As noted above, Blueprint Denver (2000) developed the concept of dividing the

City of Denver into Areas of Stability and Areas of Change in order to steer

redevelopment into preferred areas. The vast majority of spaces in Denver are considered

Areas of Stability where minimal change is expected over the next twenty years

(following the completion of the plan in 2000). But the plan does imagine some areas of

Denver changing dramatically.

Blueprint Denver (2000) lists features of an Area of Change to include:

underutilized land near downtown, areas experiencing positive change and expecting

continued growth, areas near existing and planned transit stations, areas along bus

corridors that could accommodate a pedestrian-friendly shopping environment, and areas

where major public or private investments have been designated. Most Areas of Change

are somewhat developed and have existing infrastructure but are underutilized and lack

urban design elements such as streetscaping, landscaping, or public spaces that meet the

goals, image, and brand of Denver Comprehensive Plan 2000 (Blueprint Denver, 2000).

As the plan also notes, to be designated as an area of change these neighborhoods should

have evidence of disinvestment such as deteriorating housing, high vacancy, high

unemployment, or high poverty rates. In other words, “Areas of Change,” which the city

officially wishes to change, are predominately low-income neighborhoods.

Denver’s Changing Planning Philosophy

Since the development of the 1977 plan, the shift towards planning for economic

development has been drastic. As previously noted, these changes include rebranding the

city as a vibrant 24-hour world-class city, increased use of marketing to target tourism

and business, capitalizing on culture and arts, building symbolic developments to attract

further investment, and attracting and promoting high-tech creative and service industries

and creative-class young professionals that follow.

Building on this change, the 1980s had seen business and government leaders

focus on “major efforts to diversify the region’s economy, specifically concentrating on

retaining and attracting growth industries of the future that offer higher-paid

employment” (Comprehensive Plan, 2000, p. 15). As Denver’s service sector grew, the

city used targeted public investments to change the brand and marketing of the city.

“With the Colorado Convention Center (opened in 1990), the Denver Performing Arts

Complex (the second largest in the U.S.), Coors Field baseball stadium, and the Denver

Pavilions shopping center as major attractions for residents and visitors alike, Downtown

has transformed itself from a daytime workplace to a 24-hour city offering an expanding

array of restaurants, shopping, entertainment, housing and employment” (Comprehensive

Plan, 2000, p. 15). The plan seeks to build on that foundation and to strengthen Denver’s

image as a destination for business, tourism, and convention visitors by expanding

national and international airline connections to Denver International Airport and

building and marketing the Central Platte Valley and the Downtown area as a recognized

national and international location for sports, culture, performing and visual arts, and

convention activities (Comprehensive Plan, 2000).

The economic vision of this new era of planning includes making Denver an

international leader in new technological industries “recognized on the global economic

map with well-developed business connections worldwide and strong passenger and

freight transportation connections to international locations. The metro area with Denver

at its core will be a global hub for information technology, mining and energy services,

environmental technology and financial services” (Comprehensive Plan, 2000, p. 129).

Denver Comprehensive Plan 2000 seeks to continually expand economic

opportunity through an ongoing process of updating the target industries in terms of any

advancement in the industries as well as emerging industry clusters. As a key indicator of

economic planning priorities, the plan specifically notes that “maintaining and increasing

the City’s tax base is a priority” (Comprehensive Plan, 2000, p. 126). Objectives to

maintain this tax base include creating a good business environment by improving the

regulatory climate in city government by focusing on customer service and accountability

(Comprehensive Plan, 2000). This entrepreneurial take on management has the city run

as if it were a business and citizens being customers. Additionally, note the economic

planning focus in the plan, as the plan suggests that the city “reinforce and maintain

Denver’s attractive quality of life as an economic asset. Denver’s natural environment,

climate and outdoor activities; well-maintained and architecturally diverse

neighborhoods; professional sports, recreation, cultural and arts activities; post-secondary

education; and real and perceived public safety all contribute to Denver’s attractiveness

to businesses as well as residents” (Comprehensive Plan, 2000, p. 132).

The 2000 Comprehensive Plan also takes note of the importance of the arts in

Denver, as it frames the arts as a tool of economic growth. The plan notes that,

economically the arts and cultural sector is the 11th largest nongovernment employer,

and the 2000 plans seek to enhance the ability of arts and culture to grow as an economic

generator. The arts “enhance Denver’s appeal as a center of cultural tourism”

(Comprehensive Plan, 2000, p. 195) and as world-class city. Further, the plan seeks to

develop Denver into a cultural and artistic capital recognized nationally and

internationally. The plan seeks to accomplish this aim by “incorporate(ing) Denver’s arts

and cultural activities, institutions and attractions into economic development and

marketing plans that promote Denver as a center for tourism, conventions and business”

(Comprehensive Plan, 2000 p. 202). The plan calls for cultivation of the arts in Denver’s

neighborhoods through supporting festivals, performing and visual arts events, and

cultural activities as well as embracing the development of cultural and artistic facilities

(Comprehensive Plan, 2000).

The final section of Denver Comprehensive Plan 2000 deals with implementation.

Here the plan sounds the call for use of neoliberal and entrepreneurial management

techniques. “Virtually every goal in Plan 2000 requires investment of resources from the

public, private and nonprofit sectors. In its approach to civic investment, the City should

be creative and entrepreneurial in leveraging its resources by building partnerships with

neighborhood organizations, special districts, businesses, nonprofit institutions, other

metropolitan jurisdictions, regional and state sources, and federal agencies”

(Comprehensive Plan, 2000, p. 225). Finally, Blueprint Denver (2000) aligns with

Denver Comprehensive Plan 2000 when it suggests a public-private partnership can

utilize public funds or activities to directly foster private investment and development

activity that otherwise would not occur (Blueprint Denver 2000).

The comparison between comprehensive plans clearly shows a current turn

towards a more neoliberal aim of economic development through economy planning. The

1977 plan has a clear focus on social reproduction through support for the development

of stable residential neighborhoods and a healthy work force, and what it calls

“equitable” economic development. Additionally, the 1977 plan seeks to strengthen the

working class through the provision of a steady and supportive built environment,

including education, equitable provision of parks and recreation facilities, adequate social

services, and job training. Finally, the 1977 plan seeks to alleviate discrimination and

prejudice through planning efforts.

On the other hand, the 2000 plans’ focus has taken note of global cultural,

political, and economic changes as it primarily seeks economic development and growth,

and maintaining competitiveness on an international scale. Through the use of Areas of

Stability and Areas of Change, the plan seeks to remake and gentrify low-income

neighborhoods by driving economic development and investment into these areas. The

2000 plans actively seek and promote an atmosphere attractive to creative-class

professionals and visitors through the embrace of tourism, financial sectors, and business

and consumer services.

While an investigation of Denver’s comprehensive plans clearly show the neo-

liberal turn in planning, can this same turn be detected in local neighborhood plans? To

investigate this question, three neighborhoods have been chosen. These neighborhoods

have both contemporary and past plans to compare, reflect areas where the Denver

Community Planning and Development Department has geographically focused its

efforts, and are considered Areas of Change in Blueprint Denver (2000).

The 1976-77 Five Points Neighborhood Plan

The Five Points Neighborhood plan focuses on the historical heart of the black

community in North Denver. The study area consists of several smaller subareas that

form the northeast inner-rim neighborhood outside of Downtown Denver (Figure 2). The

Five Points study area was the first suburb of thriving turn of the century Denver and saw

boom times first, as a wealthy white neighborhood and then as a thriving neighborhood

of early twentieth century African-American culture. Since the flight of the affluent to the

suburbs following the suburbanization of American cities after World War II, however,

the neighborhood declined. The historical nature of the architecture and the neighborhood

in general, the proximity to downtown, the state of disrepair and dilapidation of the

neighborhood, the high percentage of low-income people, the concentration of minorities,

and the potential of the neighborhood for redevelopment have made this study area a

prime candidate for investigation.

The Five Points Neighborhood Plan 1976-77 was developed following the two-

year Community Renewal Program (CRP) study of eastside neighborhoods. The strategy

of the CRP was developed in response to a housing need, the changing nature of land use

in the neighborhood, and the need for “a strong consistent policy to protect and improve

environmental quality” (Five Points Plan, 1977, p. 1). The 1977 Five Points

Neighborhood Plan included descriptive sections on population, housing, land use, parks

and open space, schools, libraries, police, institutions, and circulation; and the analysis

section included socioeconomic, land use and zoning, and public facilities subsections.

There was no section exclusively devoted to economic development.

The 1977 Five Points Neighborhood Plan, as has been postulated, was focused on

social reproduction and this plan contained many goals and recommendations that sought

this end. The strategy of the 1977 Plan is focused is on creating and maintaining a stable

Figure 2. Five Points Neighborhood

residential neighborhood through social reproduction measures such as the provision of

housing, rezoning for greater density, exploiting proximity to employment opportunities

(in the adjacent Central Business District, the nearby hospital district, and the northeast

industrial area), and containing existing businesses rather than on promoting new,

transformational economic development. The 1977 plan suggested that any lack of public

facilities such as parks and health care providers should be remedied on a high-priority

basis.

This plan also had emphasis on strengthening the lot of lower-income residents

through ample job provision, strengthening housing options, increasing residential wealth

and stability through homeownership, and catalyzing the provision of publicly and

privately provided services such as parks, infrastructure, health care and other services

(Five Points Neighborhood Plan, 1976). The 1977 Five Points Plan did not contain a

separate section devoted to economic development, and the only specific reference to

economic development in the plan was to study the concept of tax incentives to

encourage private investment (Five Points Plan, 1977). As can be seen, this plan is

focused on strengthening current neighborhoods and current populations rather than

gentrifying and transforming the neighborhood with new residents.

The 1995 Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan

The geographic area that made up the 1977 Five Points Plan has experienced

more recent planning efforts, and is now covered by a number of neighborhood and small

area plans that serve as supplements to Comprehensive Plan 2000. This study will

investigate the Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan (Figure 3) as well as the River

North Plan (2003). The Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan (1995) reflects major

changes on the ground that include the development of Coors Field (the home field for

the Colorado Rockies professional baseball team), and the resulting development and

buildout of the surrounding Lower Downtown neighborhood – changes which were much

of the impetus for the creation of the Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan (1995).

Reflecting Economy Planning goals, the vision statement of the 1995 Plan is to

“transform a primarily industrial area into an attractive mixed use, inner city industrial,

business, entertainment, and residential district” (Northeast Downtown Plan, 1995, p. 7).

Major goals include tackling social issues such as the treatment and housing needs of the

homeless, and minimizing the existing related social service features in the neighborhood

(through clustering of service providers, or requiring design specifications such as high

fences or landscaping that hide service provision from affluent tourists on the street) that

are perceived to lower the economic value and potential of the neighborhood.

Additionally, economic development goals include developing a marketing plan to

promote the area’s commercial and residential development potential (Northeast

Figure 3. Northeast Downtown study area

Downtown Plan, 1995).

The 1995 plan, unlike the 1977 plan, contains a chapter specifically devoted to

economic development and notes “economic and housing development is of fundamental

importance to the City and County of Denver” and “was one of the primary motivations

for preparing this Plan” (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 26). Given

the predominant non-residential nature of the neighborhood, the 1995 plan notes

economic development will likely be the larger focus. Further, the plan notes the

“popular and universal promotion of ‘economic development’ in planning and

community development circles,” suggests the purpose of this economic development is

to create employment opportunities, and urges local governments take on an active role in

this endeavor (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 208).

The plan notes six areas where the City must take this active role in economic

development, including direct investment in planning, financing and implementing large

developments, marketing the City’s advantages, creating a good business climate, and

making sure the developments proceed as planned (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood

Plan, 1995). The 1995 plan goes on to say “most of the Plan’s recommendations support,

directly or indirectly, the goals of economic development” and the plan lists several

strategies to create an environment that make economic development more viable

(Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 210). These strategies incorporate

historic preservation, improved transit options, urban design standards, and land use and

zoning as well as the creation of a comprehensive social services plan specifically

focused on homelessness and the negative impacts due to the high concentration of these

services in the neighborhood (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995).

Top policy recommendations are to “prepare economic and housing development

strategies, develop and implement a comprehensive marketing plan and program to

promote the area’s distinctive qualities, and explore and secure funding resources to carry

out development opportunities and improve the area” (Northeast Downtown

Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 27). Additionally, the 1995 plan suggests the marketing

plan “promotes the image, name, identity, comparative advantages, and assets” of the

community in order to further spur economic development (Northeast Downtown

Neighborhood Plan, 1995). This language smacks of neoliberal economic thinking, as the

quote promotes a comprehensive marketing plan, economic development strategies, and

improving the image and brand of the area.

As a specific economic growth strategy, the 1995 plan notes that Northeast

Downtown has peaked as an industrial area and as it transitions to a mixed-use area it

“functions very well as an ‘incubator area,’ providing a relatively low cost, centrally

located area to small businesses and entrepreneurs” (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood

Plan, 1995, p. 212). This language is obviously geared towards the recruitment of middle-

class, creative-class young professionals to a community that was once low-income and

primarily non-white.

The 1995 plan notes the importance of financing to achieve these goals, and lists

several ways for which businesses can gain financing including through entrepreneurial

public financing at the local, state and Federal level as well as through private banks,

public-private partnerships, business improvement districts, tax increment financing,

leveraging public funds, and tax abatement (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan,

1995). The plan does note the “vigorous competition for development” the neighborhood

has with other areas and suggests a coordinated economic development strategy is needed

to manage economic development (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p.

235).

In a separate chapter, the Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan (1995) seeks

to create a housing development plan that is an integral part of the redevelopment and

revitalization of the neighborhood, and a component of the overall economic

development strategy. Increasing the residential base in the neighborhood promotes new

and existing development because “an active populace results in a safer and more

progressive urban environment” (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p.

243). Through adaptive reuse of industrial buildings and targeted infill, this economic

development strategy seeks upscale housing to attract creative-class young professionals

by converting industrial buildings to lofts, live/work studio residences, and new mixed-

use residential and commercial/retail developments.

The Northeast Downtown Denver Market Analysis was completed as part of the

planning process and incorporated as a chapter in the 1995 Plan. Findings include “the

need to improve its rough and unkempt image in order to expand the range of its market

opportunities” (Northeast Denver Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 12) as well as the use of

Coors Field to create new market interest. Additionally, a priority of the 1995 plan is to

help define and (re)name the neighborhood area of Northeast Downtown in order to

foster a new identity (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995).

As part of the intention to create a new brand, the 1995 plan seeks to capitalize on

Coors Field through a drive to create the Ballpark Historic District (Figure 4). This

historic district is touted as a way that historic preservation and urban design standards

can have a role in “stabilizing development conditions and facilitating appropriate re-

development” (Northeast Denver Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 17). Reflecting these goals

of using historical themes as a development opportunity, the architects of Coors Field

considered the historical nature of the neighborhood as the ballpark design was meant to

resemble a modern take on an early 20th Century urban ballpark (Ballparks of Baseball,

2013); though one with ample commercial and entertainment options meant to anchor the

development of Lower Downtown to the south and west and Northeast Downtown to the

north and east. In fact, the 1995 Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan refers to Coors

Field as an “entertainment palace built into the neighborhood” and suggests restaurants,

Figure 4. Ballpark Historic District

re-use opportunities for residential development, arts related or business showrooms, and

offices as development opportunities around the ballpark (Northeast Downtown

Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 17). The ballpark serves as the anchor for the 1995 plan’s

desire to create an entertainment district and leverage these attractions when seeking

investment in new commercial and residential development.

The marketing analysis notes the new market exposure the neighborhood will

experience by the influx of baseball fans from Coors Field, and that the “opportunity to

showcase these areas on a repeated basis at no cost to the subarea is a tremendous market

opportunity” (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 44). The plan suggests

the creation of this mixed-use Northeast Downtown neighborhood will “maximize market

opportunities and, in time, create an exciting and distinctive part of Denver” (Northeast

Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 21). The 1995 plan’s focus for the Ballpark

subarea as an entertainment district is indicative of the focus by local government on

entertainment and tourism as economic growth sectors.

The plan further seeks to capitalize on the cultural and historic nature of the

neighborhood when it notes, in the land use section, that this area’s history and identity is

associated with the influx of many different ethnic groups “who want to preserve and

expand that multicultural heritage in a marketplace of diverse ethnic stores and shops”

(Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 123). This commercially-oriented,

symbolically-cultural area would include theme restaurants and bars, entertainment and

recreation areas, and retail uses, many consisting of “individual or entrepreneurial stores

rather than national or regional chains” with an “overriding theme, common streetscape

and amenities, a promotions program, organized events and street festivals, and an

interest group to address and promote parking issues, financing availability and

coordination with the City for police and other services” (Northeast Downtown

Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 63).

The 1995 plan includes such branding language as creating “a more attractive,

workable, cohesive, and distinctive part of Denver” (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood

Plan, 1995, p. 22). The plan further notes one subarea’s focus should be as a mixed-use

residential and neighborhood retail area with live/work situations, offices, and

neighborhood support services. It suggests a second subarea’s “distinguishing brand mix”

(Northeast Denver Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 20), should include traditional industrial

and residential but also creative class draws such as industrial arts, studios, live/work

buildings, offices, and other support and service uses. The 1995 Plan references the need

to develop a distinctive marketable image for the neighborhood as a means to both

separate it from the adjacent Lower Downtown neighborhood but to also cultivate its own

identity. The 1995 Plan suggests the neighborhood has a “walk on the wild side feel to it”

and that “while it wants to upgrade itself and remove its rougher elements, it desires to

retain a certain ‘reverse chic’ feel and character” (Northeast Denver Neighborhood Plan,

1995, p. 19). This quote well expresses the goal of planners to create a sense of safety and

cleanliness in the community even as they further build a brand that capitalizes upon the

neighborhood’s existing image.

Design goals also include capitalizing on natural features such as the nearby

South Platte River and mountain views, making the neighborhood more pedestrian and

bicycle friendly, and improving the physical appearance of through streetscaping,

wayfinding improvements, and design guidelines (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood

Plan, 1995). As will be further discussed later in the investigation of the Cherry Creek

neighborhood, the importance of creating vibrant pedestrian-focused areas is a central

feature in the economic planning model.

The marketing summary further seeks to create a positive image and brand for the

neighborhood by recommending the creation of design guidelines for retail business,

traffic controls, design controls on parking lots, and coordinated security for baseball

games and events “so that patrons have a positive experience and impression of the area”

(Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 49). As the 1995 plan notes “the

primary benefit of local residents is as a core business clientele” and as “a desirable and

secure image for other visitors to the area” (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan,

1995, p. 64). These quotes show the secondary place residents hold in planning efforts as

the importance of ballpark and game tourists, downtown workers, and national and

international travelers as potential clientele for potential dining and entertainment

businesses is stressed over the welfare of the neighborhoods low-income citizens

(Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995).

As part of this brand, the 1995 plan seeks to create its version of a safe and clean

environment. Among the recommendations are: increased landscaping but “without

creating meeting places as ‘hang outs’ for people perceived to be physically threatening”

(Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 48); promoting nighttime security

along pedestrian areas and sidewalks to create a safe feeling in order to attract visitors;

and “dressing up” the portion of one subarea adjacent to the ballpark (Northeast

Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 50). The marketing summary highlights the

importance of making and keeping the area visually and physically attractive in order to

appeal to repeat business and notes this strategy must include a “solid, evolving business

base and organized festivals and activities to draw new and repeat visitors to the area”

(Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 65).

Finally, as the Marketing Analysis seeks to capitalize on public and private

investment in the neighborhood, it notes the market reality that “it is important that

capital investment and operating costs enable businesses to succeed with a limited share

of the total market, given the substantial competition” (Northeast Downtown

Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 65). The plan does note a lack of services (such as a grocery

store or community meeting place) located in the neighborhood as well as a need for

improved pedestrian and bicycle connectivity. The 1995 plan lists areas where “potential

‘market stimulating’ interventions” by the City could help, including transportation plans,

zoning, and infrastructure improvements (Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan,

1995, p. 52).

Following these efforts, the 1995 Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan does

address several social issues, including the concentration of several social service

facilities that focus on homelessness in the neighborhood. Although the plan does

reference the root causes of homelessness as it notes that some homeless are

runaway/throwaway youth, suffer from mental illness and substance abuse problems, or

are “economically disadvantaged” (Northeast Denver Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 15),

the plan does not offer proactive solutions to these structural issues, but instead offers

reactionary actions to a range of problems peripheral to these root causes, including

proposals to address public safety issues such as public drunkenness, vandalism, and

prostitution; the public health issues such as garbage; lack of access to public restrooms

and drinking fountains; presence of disease such as HIV; lack of a City response to “aid

fallen/stricken clients (detox);” public nuisance and welfare issues including loitering,

“curbside feeding;” and the negative impact on property owners and pedestrians

(Northeast Denver Neighborhood Plan, 1995, p. 15-16).

Overall, the plan states a desire to move social service providers focused on

homelessness away from the economically viable downtown and adjacent inner-rim

neighborhoods, to an undisclosed location further from downtown. Unsurprisingly, the

plan does not specify a place and recognizes the improbability of such an endeavor. In an

attempt to disassociate the neighborhood from the negative image of homelessness, the

plan advocates shielding the public from the provision of social services as best as

possible through means such as grouping the providers together geographically and

advocating certain design and zoning standards on buildings that shield the nature and

function of the service provider from the street.

While taking full stock of the problems associated with homelessness, the

language used in this area of the plan is in line with Neil Smith’s concept of revanchism.

Though the plan seems to offer some sympathy, it mostly advances a need to address

these social issues not as a social or moral imperative, but rather as a means to create a

better business climate. Though recommendations include drug and alcohol treatment,

housing programs, mental health initiatives, job counseling, and a comprehensive social

services plan for city initiatives, the measures are wrapped in punitive measures as other

recommendations include the suspension of provision of any additional emergency

shelters, day shelters or food lines in Northeast Downtown until a broader social services

plan is prepared and implemented (which could, of course, never occur); and a legislative

push to restrict the sale of fortified wines and associated liquors, which is a relatively

punitive measure that does little to solve the actual structural problems of homelessness

(Northeast Denver Neighborhood Plan, 1995).

The 2003 River North Small Area Plan

The River North Plan (2003) is the first small area plan by Denver’s Community

Planning and Development Department following the creation of the Comprehensive

Plan 2000 and Blueprint Denver (2000) and is in the same vein as the 1995 Northeast

Downtown Plan. The River North Plan (2003) includes three distinct corridors, a

proposed light rail station and surrounding transit oriented development (TOD), and a

special events district. Most of the plan’s study area is designated as an Area of Change

in accordance with Blueprint Denver (2000). The River North Plan (2003), while

encompassing parts of many of Denver traditional statistical neighborhoods, does not

include the predominantly residentially zoned areas of these neighborhoods, but rather

targets old, industrially zoned areas (River North Plan, 2003) (Figure 5). The River North

Plan (2003) seeks to promote these old industrial areas as new growth areas for the

creative-class economy, to identify new locations for development, and to create a mixed-

use neighborhood focused on arts, culture, events, and transit by capitalizing on recent

public investments in transportation improvements (River North Plan, 2003). The study

area contains several connected corridors, small districts, amenities and activity centers

each with their own development potential.

The 2003 plan suggests developing the Brighton Blvd. corridor (a boulevard seen

as a gateway to downtown) in a way that enhances the overall image of the street and

promotes new investment (River North Plan, 2003). Parallel to the Brighton Blvd

Corridor is the South Platte River Corridor, a natural open space where the 2003 plan

seeks to attract new residential development to “take advantage of the river and enhance

it as an open space corridor” (River North Plan, 2003, p. 60). Additionally, two suggested

major redevelopment subareas, on opposite ends of the parallel corridors, offer the

potential to “establish a unique Transit Oriented Development in the vicinity of the

proposed 40th and 40th station in which the station is incorporated into the development,

and facilitate the redevelopment of the Denargo Market area into an exciting mixed-use

community” (River North Plan, 2003, p. 59).

Seeking to capitalize on a close connection to the Platte River and close proximity

Figure 5. River North small area conceptual plan

to downtown, the 2003 plan suggests the redevelopment of Denargo Market into a mixed-

use festival marketplace with niche commercial retail uses. The 2003 plan seeks to steer

housing to the Denargo Market area and near the 40th and 40th TOD area as well as

promote the possibility that “residential in other locations… especially artist’s studios,

may be appropriate” (River North Plan, 2003, p. 94). One final subarea included in the

River North Plan (2003) is the events district. This district, located on the edge of the

study area furthest from downtown, includes the National Western Stock Show (a

national draw) and other venues that offer opportunities for year round entertainment and

economic activity (River North Plan, 2003).

The 2003 plan seeks to utilize similar economic planning techniques as the 1995

Northeast Downtown Plan. For example, in describing the planned transit oriented

development around the 40th St. and 40th Ave. rail stop, the plan reinforces economic

planning goals of branding a safe and inviting space by supporting “pedestrian oriented

and transit-supportive character of the station area that creates a friendly and useable

public space” (River North Plan, 2003, p. 74). Additionally, The River North Plan (2003)

looks to capitalize on public investment, noting improvements to bike and pedestrian

thoroughfares are crucial for River North to achieve the ultimate vision of creating a

vibrant, mixed-use area (River North Plan, 2003). Central to this vision is the symbolic

40th St. and 40th Ave. TOD area, as the area provides a good opportunity for a symbolic

mixed-use development that capitalizes on an expanding transit system and could serve to

instigate further development. The River North Plan (2003) seeks to capitalize on the

attractiveness of TOD to the creative class by suggesting that “in addition to residential,

office, and retail development, this area could include research and development and

corporate office headquarters” that can host both creative and knowledge-based

industries, and their employees (River North Plan, 2003, p. 71-72).

Much like the 1995 Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan, the 2003 River

North Plan includes a chapter specifically devoted to economic growth. Based on

Blueprint Denver (2000), the Economic Development section of the River North Plan

(2003) identifies future land uses for housing, retail, light manufacturing, research and

development and commercial office space (River North Plan, 2003). As noted, most of

the River North area is industrial, so a large amount of residential growth is planned

through the conversion of outdated industrial or commercial buildings to new uses

(Figure 6). The plan states “efforts should reflect the theme, or vision, for the land use

Figure 6. Land use in River North

area, thus supporting that private investment which can most effectively leverage public

initiatives” (River North Plan, 2003, p. 39).

The River North Plan (2003) identifies an events matrix that cites possible

“events” that could help change the land use, character, and image of the area and work

in tandem with this “creative class” oriented residential development. The plan suggests

land use or capital planning documents can serve as an impetus for further development

and these events include major infrastructure projects such as commuter rail, completion

of new developments, and adaptive reuse that can serve as symbolic developments and

“prove-up the market” (River North Plan, 2003, p. 37). Additionally, the economic

activity chapter of the River North Plan (2003) seeks to capitalize on the Denver

Coliseum and Stock Show Pavilion as a “catalyst for supportive commercial development

that could also benefit the neighborhood” (River North Plan, 2003, p. 79).

As part of economic development, the plan also notes Downtown’s rapidly

growing residential market and suggests River North could capitalize by developing new

retail and service options, including artistic uses that can increase the day and nighttime

population and serve as the impetus for more commercial development (River North

Plan, 2003). In order to retain existing business and attract new business, economic

incentives for development or redevelopment should be offered, the plan notes, and

public amenities, services and infrastructure improvements should be leveraged (River

North Plan, 2003).

As can be seen from this comparison the differences between the foci of the two

generations of plans are stark. The 1977 Five Points Neighborhood Plan was primarily

geared towards social reproduction through stabilizing the residential portion of the

neighborhood through provision of jobs and job training, expanding housing options for

low-income individuals, and by containing business in currently zoned industrial areas.

On the other hand, more recent planning efforts such as the Northeast Downtown

Neighborhood Plan (1995), and the River North Plan (2003) seek to use the full

neoliberal toolbox to attract development through marketing and branding, symbolic

developments, leveraging public projects, and creating a pedestrian oriented environment.

The 1981 Westside Neighborhood Plan

The second neighborhood study area has many of the similar qualities as the first

study area. The Westside, or La Alma/Lincoln Park neighborhood, is located just south of

Downtown and has cultural and historical significance as an inner rim suburb and

Chicano neighborhood. The La Alma/Lincoln Park neighborhood (Figure 7) saw

improvements during the City Beautiful Movement in the 1920’s under Mayor Speer.

These included improvements to the city parkway of Speer Blvd, the development of the

sprawling Sunken Gardens Park and adjacent placement of West High School, and the

opening of the public Denver Health Hospital (Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981). The

study area has high concentrations of low-income residents and a high minority

population. The study area boasts a close proximity to downtown, and much like the

Northeast Downtown Neighborhood, La Alma/Lincoln Park has enormous potential for

investment and redevelopment in a neoliberal post-industrial global economy.

The 1981 Westside Neighborhood Plan focuses on the La Alma/Lincoln Park

Neighborhood as well as the nearby Baker Neighborhood, though my focus will be

exclusively on La Alma/Lincoln Park. While the plan did recognize that the

neighborhood had a large number of industrial and non-residential uses, “the plan

generally addresses these areas only to the extent that they impact the residential areas”

(Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981, p. 1). This was due to the findings that most of the

problems in Westside were in the residential areas and most concerns were voiced from

the residential sectors (Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981). The residential population at

the time was predominately lower-income, upward of 70% Chicano, and a higher

percentage of the population was unemployed as compared to the City as a whole

(Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981). These resident’s concerns are recognized by the

plan’s desire to “maintain an appropriate balance of land uses that preserves the

Figure 7. La Alma/Lincoln Park character areas

residential stability of the Westside community” (Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981, p.

12). This desire to foster stability in the existing (low-income) population is seen in the

plans efforts to discourage further expansion of industrial and commercial uses by

containing them in appropriately zoned areas and encouraging residential infill of

residentially zoned vacant land.

The 1981 Westside plan, as with the Five Points Neighborhood Plan (1977), was

produced in response to the 1972 Denver Community Renewal Program’s designation of

the study areas as blighted and was seen as a way to capitalize and continue some public

and private investment already underway in these areas at the time of the writing

(Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981). The emphasis of the 1981 plan, much like the 1977

Five Points plan, was on the residential portions of the neighborhoods and contains

recommendations on how to stabilize, maintain and improve these areas through

equitable social production measures (Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981).

The strategies for achieving these equitable goals were through planning to

enhance the existing built environment and improving job opportunities for existing

residents. For example, the 1981 plan includes a section titled Environment, reflecting

environmental concerns of the day such as air pollution but also included

recommendations in other sections that contribute to the “equity” tone of the plan. These

efforts include such things as tree planting programs, litter removal, alley paving

programs, improvements to public spaces, sidewalk improvements, funding for

community art, providing dumpsters for areas that didn’t have them, enforcement of truck

prohibition routes, and public infrastructure improvements (Westside Neighborhood Plan,

1981).

In another nod to equity planning for the built environment, the 1981 plan noted

“community facilities are important to both the identity and quality of life in the Westside

neighborhoods since they help to meet the educational, recreational, and social needs of

the residents. They influence the desirability of the community and are essential to its full

development” (Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981, p. 24). The plan contained a detailed

list of several schools, parks, recreation facilities, libraries and social services within the

neighborhood; and objectives included continued development of community facilities as

the need arose, as well as increasing awareness of the existence of these facilities

(Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981).

Noting the importance of stable employment for growing a healthy residential

community, the plan stated that adequate employment opportunity “says something about

its residents’ ability to own and maintain property as well as their needs for public

facilities,” and “must also be considered in a description of the community’s people to

better understand housing, transportation, and public facility needs” (Westside

Neighborhood Plan, 1981, p. 4). Some of the plan’s stated goals were the desire to

improve job opportunities for residents, especially for young adults, through better

communication between residents and employers; to improve availability of job training

programs; and to encourage adoption of affirmative action programs by local businesses

(Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981). Additional social reproduction employment related

recommendations included provision of day care facilities, encouraging local businesses

to hire local residents, and first hire priorities (hiring residents from the neighborhood)

for City sponsored capital improvement projects in neighborhood (Westside

Neighborhood Plan, 1981).

The 1981 plan further stressed the importance of homeownership to a stable

neighborhood and noted that the ownership rates of the La Alma/Lincoln Park

neighborhood were low compared to the city average. Though the 1981 plan sought to

expand homeownership, it also noted that three of the greatest concerns with home

ownership growth are displacement of lower-income residents, the loss of rental units,

and a significant increase in rental rates and home purchase prices (Westside

Neighborhood Plan, 1981). The plan noted that in the four years prior to the completion

of the 1981 Plan there has been a “substantial amount of real estate speculation,” and

“these sales, resales, appreciation rates, and climbing values are of concern to both the

City and the neighborhood since housing costs are now beyond the reach of many low

income individuals and families that formerly could afford to live in the Westside”

(Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981, p. 15).

The plan listed several options to assist in the purchase or rental of homes by low-

income people and families, and asserted specific goals of retaining La Alma/Lincoln

Park as a residential neighborhood by preserving housing stock and “encouraging

independence and self-sufficiency through low income home ownership” (Westside

Neighborhood Plan, 1981, p. 16). One final equity planning goal was “to preserve or

maintain the community’s diversity of income, age, race, and culture by providing

housing types, sizes, and densities to satisfy the varying needs and desires of all

economic segments of the neighborhoods, giving special attention to low income and

elderly persons” (Westside Neighborhood Plan, 1981, p. 16).

The 2010 La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan

The 2010 La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, on the other, hand follows

Blueprint Denver’s (2000) economic planning inspired concept of Areas of Change and

Areas of Stability. The 2010 plan’s executive summary, like other contemporary plans,

notes the historical significance of the neighborhood and begins to brand the La

Alma/Lincoln Park as a “dynamic, mixed-use neighborhood at the heart of Denver” (La

Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 4). The vision seeks to “create

opportunities for economically rewarding development” (La Alma/Lincoln Park

Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 22) through the development of a mass transit friendly,

pedestrian-oriented neighborhood with new community gathering spaces, and diverse

housing options as well as incubating entrepreneurial businesses (La Alma/Lincoln Park

Neighborhood Plan, 2010).

The strategy of the 2010 plan develops several Character Area plans for targeted

economic development and strategic provision of public projects. These include a Main

Street Corridor, a mixed-use area, a residential area, an institutional area, an industrial

area, and the transit oriented development area. These area plans are meant to develop the

character and “infuse the areas with a sense of place” to guide future development for

residents, public officials and private developers (La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood

Plan, 2010, p. 38). Reflecting a broader turn to economy planning, the plan notes: “high

volume transportation corridors offer opportunities for economic development, increased

density, and increased transit use” (La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p.

40). Further the plan suggests that the city should “assist in paying for local

improvements to spur development in Areas of Change” (La Alma/Lincoln Park

Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 22). As can be seen, the focus is not to lift up the current

low-income residents but to transform this neighborhood into something new, exciting

and able to generate development and wealth. As an example, notice in the

accompanying maps (Figure 8) that the areas with the highest concentration of female

single head of households are also the same areas that are considered Areas of Change.

The 2010 plan utilizes neoliberal economic planning strategies to achieve these

investment and development goals include marketing and branding, promoting cultural

and art districts, developing pedestrian friendly spaces, utilizing transit, taking advantage

of natural features and historic institutions, building symbolic developments, and

leveraging public improvements. For example, the Santa Fe Blvd. corridor is considered

a Main Street in the 2010 plan and has an “emerging identity as an arts and cultural

Figure 8. Single-head of households and Areas of Change

district with a Latino character that provides a unique cultural opportunity” (La

Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 33). This is an example of urban

planning seeking to capitalize on culture for economic development.

The plan utilizes marketing to create a “consistent visual identity” (La

Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 45) of the corridor to achieve the goal of

fostering the brand of the consumer-oriented Santa Fe Arts District. This is achieved by

making the area a stable pedestrian corridor and “enhance(ing) the convenience, ease and

enjoyment of transit, walking, shopping, and public gathering” (La Alma/Lincoln Park

Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 40). To support this aim, regulatory tools, design standards

and targeted financing seek to promote a “vital core of arts and commercial uses” and the

area as a destination for locally owned shops, restaurants and artistic venues (La

Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 39). The 2010 plan also capitalizes on

public infrastructure improvements in order to “recapture the pedestrian and transit-

friendly character” of the Santa Fe Blvd. corridor through streetscaping, wayfinding,

landscaping, lighting, provision of benches, and enhanced retail and commercial uses (La

Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 39).

Other means to capitalize on the historical nature, culture, and popular amenities

of the neighborhood include “enhance(ing) the S. Platte River as an amenity” (La

Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 5), and the desire to make sure the

“proximity to the Cherry Creek Trail and Speer Boulevard Parkway are capitalized upon”

(La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 17), in order to both inspire

improvements to the area, and to attract more dense residential and retail (La

Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010). Other public improvements in the

neighborhood include wayfinding signage, gateway features, lighting, landscaping,

enhanced building facades, and streetscaping while capitalizing on historically significant

buildings.

Additionally, the Transit Oriented Development, an Area of Change located near

the 10th and Osage light rail station, provides an excellent example of a symbolic

development in the neighborhood. The area has access and demand for transit options,

close proximity to the Auraria Higher Education campus and Downtown, and the “ability

to simulate economic development, as well as reinvestment in historic resources” (La

Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 4). The 2010 plan lists five guiding

principles for the TOD area, several of which further illustrate a neoliberal turn in

planning. These principles include “place making” or branding through “creating safe,

comfortable, varied and attractive station areas with a distinct identity” (La Alma/Lincoln

Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 50) as well as providing a mix of locations for

employment, play, shopping, and residential uses (popular to the creative class) to

maximize location efficiency.

The 2010 plan also notes the TOD area’s symbolic role as a “central organizing

feature and link to the existing la Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood and Santa Fe Arts &

Business corridor” (La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 52), by

advocating the creation an east-west commercial space between the TOD and the Santa

Fe corridor. This space between the TOD and Santa Fe Blvd. will be pedestrian friendly

and encompass a network of parks and pavilions. The plan then lists several key

recommendations that planners believe will best serve the TOD. These include

“creat(ing) an amenity for TOD housing” (La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan,

2010, p. 52) through locating commercial and retail in the ground floors of high-density

development near the station, and creating new open spaces that connect and increase

positive use of the existing park bearing the neighborhood’s name. These

recommendations seek to steer public investments to the TOD area and to capitalize on

public spaces in leveraging fundamental transformation of the area. The desire to reinvent

this space as a high density, pedestrian friendly place serves the mobile creative-class

professional well.

The TOD is intended to create an active environment, popular for residents and

tourists alike, that includes “incubator spaces for… entrepreneurial businesses,”

live/work opportunities, and ground floor services (La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood

Plan, 2010, p. 52). This active environment is hoped to lead to increased economic

development, higher tax revenues, and an increase in population - specifically middle-

class creative professionals. The 2010 plan does list several equitable land use goals for

the TOD, including supporting locally-owned and local-supporting businesses,

sustainable development, providing amenities such as a community gathering place, job

training, and affordable housing but also clearly states that these developments are meant

to serve several economy planning goals such as creating opportunities for local

entrepreneurs, attracting creative-class professionals, and capitalizing on the area as a

“destination to serve as the area’s cultural identity” (La Alma/Lincoln Park

Neighborhood Plan, 2010, p. 54).

Unlike the 1981 Westside Neighborhood Plan, the 2000 La Alma/Lincoln Park

Neighborhood Plan, as with the 1995 Northeast Downtown and 2003 River North plans,

includes a specific chapter devoted to economic development. Generally, the 2010 plan

notes that the neighborhood provides an employment base and calls for supporting retail,

office, live/work, and residential infill within walking distance of each other. This call

aims to support local businesses and enhance local employment. The plan suggests

employment can be found in high-end service sector jobs, light industrial sectors,

nontraditional employment and live/work opportunities popular for the creative class (La

Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010).

Specifically, the economic development section does suggest promoting equitable

local programs that support small business and workforce development, provide gap

financing through the City’s Office of Economic Development, promote adaptive reuse,

and improve public infrastructure as means to revitalize the neighborhood (La

Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan, 2010). These goals should be viewed in an

economic planning context, however, as the 2010 plan also lists several “Catalyst

Projects” that will lead to desired change in the neighborhood and can serve as symbolic

developments to further attract investment. As an example, development of public plazas

and green spaces along 10th Avenue would serve to connect the TOD and Santa Fe

Corridor. This will make the connecting corridor a “signature street” where a mix of

commercial and retail uses are encouraged (La Alma/Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan,

2010).

As can be seen from the investigation of this neighborhood, the focus of the 1981

plan is on preserving the residential character of the neighborhood while the focus of the

2010 plan is on economic development. This economic growth aims to transform the

neighborhood and the population into something new and different, and is promoted

through the 2010 plan by creating a brand that capitalizes on the culture and historical

nature of the neighborhood and the Santa Fe corridor, by symbolically developing the

transit stop and surrounding TOD, and by leveraging public infrastructure projects and

improvements.

The 1976 Cherry Creek Neighborhood Plan

The third and final set of neighborhood plans to be investigated in this study are

plans prepared for the Cherry Creek Neighborhood (Figure 9). Unlike other plans

discussed in this study, the Cherry Creek Neighborhood does not border downtown,

however the neighborhood has long been an activity center for the City of

Denver. The neighborhood boasts a number of retail shopping options that are

highlighted in both the 1976 and the 2012 plans developed for this area. Because this area

has been, and continues to be, a thriving retail district, economic development

surrounding this district has been a part of the neighborhood’s strategy since before the

time of my longitudinal study. Tracking the change in focus of these efforts from the

1976 plan to the 2012 plan should illustrate the neoliberal economic turn observed

nationally and internationally.

The Cherry Creek Neighborhood Plan of 1976 was completed prior to the

comprehensive plan of 1977 but the contents were in line with the Equity Planning model

outlined in the 1977 Comprehensive plan. The purpose of the plan was “to provide an

immediate action program by identifying resources that meet neighborhood needs”

(Cherry Creek Plan, 1976, p. 3). These needs, as noted in the 1977 Comprehensive Plan,

were deemed to be programs to retain the stability of residential neighborhoods. Similar

to other 1970s era plans, the policy actions focused on growing the neighborhood through

Figure 9. Cherry Creek Neighborhood

“orderly and balanced development and improvement” that sought to accommodate the

projected population of the neighborhood and keep the character as a mixed-density

neighborhood (Cherry Creek Plan, 1976, p. 2).

In order to create stable neighborhoods, the 1976 Cherry Creek Neighborhood

Plan sought to solidify housing stock, create employment opportunities, and create an

environment that allowed workers to thrive through social reproduction programs.

Programs meant to drive social reproduction included actions to increase

homeownership, job training, and other social services programs, as well as developing,

placing and retaining community amenities such as libraries, schools, parks, and

recreation centers.

The 1976 plan noted concerns over a number of elementary schools based on

perceptions of increasing population in the neighborhood, and included a significant

summary on public libraries that asserted the benefits of the library as a public space

(Cherry Creek Plan, 1976, p. 10). Among policy recommendations, the plan encouraged

the neighborhood to remain a mixed-density and mixed-income residential neighborhood,

while emphasizing the conservation of single-family homes, and included the goal of

increasing home ownership (Cherry Creek Plan, 1976).

Additionally, the 1976 plan included recommendations for land use and zoning,

transportation, and public facilities that emphasized preserving the character of the

residential neighborhoods. The plan sought to build and maintain stable residential

neighborhoods through the creation of buffers between residential and commercial

subareas, effectively transporting people around through a circulator bus route,

developing parkland and a hiking/bike path to connect the Cherry Creek Greenway with

the shopping center, developing senior citizen activities at local parks, and encouraging

street tree planting (Cherry Creek Plan, 1976).

Given the existing retail areas in the neighborhood, the plan sought to promote the

economic health of the neighborhood through the provision of both retail and service

facilities, as well as by strategically placing employment and transportation facilities to

bring workers and shoppers into the area and to transport workers outside the

neighborhood (Cherry Creek Plan, 1976). Though the Cherry Creek neighborhood had

ample retail and commercial businesses, the 1976 plan focused on containing these

businesses in a certain district and preventing them from encroaching on residential

neighborhoods. Economic development was achieved by ensuring businesses had

healthy, qualified, and educated workers through provision of the aforementioned job

training and social services. Though there were passing mentions of tax and other

incentives meant to stimulate economic growth, economic development was not a main

focus of 1976 plan (Cherry Creek Plan, 1976).

The 2012 Cherry Creek Neighborhood Plan

The 2012 Cherry Creek Neighborhood Plan, on the other hand, has a primary

focus on economic development that initially begins with creation of an image for the

Cherry Creek neighborhood. The vision for the neighborhood of the 2012 plan is one that

is “connected, distinctive, green, and prosperous” (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 10). The

plan states that the neighborhood can build on a “great regional and national image and

signature identity for Denver” as a “compact live, work and play community” (Cherry

Creek Plan, 2012, p. 10). The vision asserts the Cherry Creek Neighborhood should build

on its assets, including diverse shopping options, regional and local amenities, cultural

diversity, and the walkable nature of the neighborhood (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012). The

language used here sets the stage for the rest of the plan seemingly created to stimulate

economic growth. The plan discusses each of the four factors noted in the vision

(connected, distinctive, green, and prosperous) in some detail, noting how traditional

planning segments such as land use, urban design, and transportation fit into the vision.

For example, a key part of the Cherry Creek image is the identity of the

neighborhood as a prosperous one. Following the planning direction outlined in Denver’s

Comprehensive Plan 2000 of “enhancing existing business centers to retain and expand a

variety of high quality uses, support Denver’s business climate, create jobs, complement

neighboring residential areas and to generate public revenue” (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012,

p. 44), the neighborhood plan seeks to support this goal and image when branding the

neighborhood as prosperous. This brand is used to attract not only tourists and shoppers

but also to attract well-to-do residents, creative-class professionals, upscale retail, and

cultural amenities.

In order to remain prosperous, a “connected” Cherry Creek must build on its

transit options. The more current neighborhood plan asserts that the area is a destination

for “employees, national and international tourists, hotel guests in Cherry Creek,

everyday shoppers, business travelers, Downtown hotel guests and conventioneers”

(Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 15). The ability to connect to other parts of the city and the

airport is very important to maintain the ability to attract an increasing amount of tourists,

shoppers and hotel guests. The 2012 plan, when describing a “distinctive Cherry Creek,”

talks about the unique image and brand of the neighborhood based on the perceived

desirability of the neighborhood, the urban form, the mix of land uses, and the distinct

subareas. As we break down the overall vision of the plan, we see how the plan is

oriented towards finding and taking advantage of redevelopment opportunities in order to

capitalize on the tourist and service draws in the neighborhood, and to continue to attract

tourists, shoppers, hotel guests and the tax receipts that follow (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012).

As part of being “connected,” and as has been suggested in previous

investigations of neoliberal neighborhood plans focused on economic development,

creating a pedestrian oriented atmosphere is an important component in economic

planning efforts. The Cherry Creek Neighborhood Plan (2012) offers the most direct and

specific reason as to why, when it states “walkability equals prosperity: national trends

indicate that pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use communities will prove most attractive to the

creative class, young professionals, seniors, and families, as well as empty nesters”

(Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 47). The plan continues by suggesting, “pedestrian oriented

development creates the visual interest and eyes on the street to encourage walking in an

attractive, convenient and safe area. Providing attractive connections within the Cherry

Creek area assures that the subareas are well connected and interrelated” (Cherry Creek

Plan, 2012, p. 47). As these quotes illustrate, creating pedestrian-oriented nirvanas lined

with open spaces, amenities and services is part of a strategy to attract tourists and

creative-class workers as well as to promote an inviting, safe space, all of which is aimed

at economic growth and increased tax revenues (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012).

As part of this pedestrian-oriented strategy, the 2012 plan calls for concentrating

economic activity and higher density mixed-use buildings along multi-modal streets,

prominent intersections, and major public spaces to connect to transportation and enhance

the pedestrian nature as well as using urban design standards in order for new

development to fit in with existing development (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012) (Figure 10).

To support this strategy, the 2012 Cherry Creek Neighborhood Plan suggests use of

regulatory tools creating a Pedestrian Priority Zone (PPZ) to support the existing mixed-

use development plan of the neighborhood, the retail and commercial businesses, and the

high transit ridership (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012). The PPZ would be the second such zone

in Denver after Downtown and the plan urges both future public and private development

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Figure 10. Cherry Creek pedestrian areas

to take this into account when drawing up development plans (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012).

The 2012 plan further reasons that pedestrian-oriented “public spaces form the

heart of any community. They promote health, happiness and well being. They celebrate

a community’s assets. Successful public spaces attract people, economic vitality and

investment in an area. Failed public spaces create a perception of emptiness and can

result in a lack of investment” (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 35). Pedestrian-oriented

public spaces serve to activate a place by giving it additional function and by attracting

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people. This helps people to escape the urban jungle by creating a recreational or passive

oasis as well as serving as a way to connect people to the space (Cherry Creek Plan,

2012). The 2012 plan seeks to capitalize on public investment in public spaces, parks and

infrastructure and turn this public investment into assets that attract private investment

and creative-class young professionals.

To this end, the 2012 plan suggests maximizing the impact of public investment

in streets and streetscapes by creating so called “festival streets” as a means to stimulate

economic growth. Accomplished through a partnership between the Business

Improvement District, business and property owners, and residents, these streets would

be used to host community and cultural events that foster social interaction, attract

visitors and tourists, and support the identity of the Cherry Creek Neighborhood (Cherry

Creek Plan, 2012). As an example,

The recently completed Fillmore Plaza is an exemplary street designed for enhanced pedestrian, event and retail activity that benefits businesses, residents, shoppers and visitors on the block, and also serves as the primary gateway to Cherry Creek North from the Shopping Center and 1st Avenue. The plaza establishes an identity for the area through enhanced lighting, trees and landscaping, pavers, street furniture, wayfinding signage and a central iconic structure spanning the street (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 42).

This quote has it all. The plan seeks to attract visitors and tourists by developing the

identity and brand of the neighborhood through capitalizing on the culture of the

neighborhood and leveraging public infrastructure improvements.

The signature event for the neighborhood is the annual Cherry Creek Arts

Festival, a regional and national attraction, which takes place on many of the

neighborhood’s festival streets. The arts are an important feature and brand for the

neighborhood as it seeks to capitalize on its artistic identity to attract visitors, tourists,

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and creative class residents and employees. The neighborhood also boasts eighteen art

galleries and uses a mixed art and garden design scheme throughout the Cherry Creek

North subarea (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012).

In addition to representing a “connected” neighborhood, many of the

recommendations concerning the creation of pedestrian-oriented spaces represent the

vision of a “Green” Cherry Creek. Part of this vision is the desire to take advantage of the

underused Cherry Creek Greenway that runs adjacent to the shopping district and forms

the neighborhood’s southern boundary. By improving access and tying in the Greenway

with increased development, the 2012 Plan seeks to capitalize on the natural amenity to

stimulate economic development and growth (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012). In similar ways,

the 2012 plan also looks for other economic opportunities that capitalize on public green

space. This includes increasing connections between subareas and public parks, utilizing

parks for community or cultural events by possibly adding an amphitheater, and by

creating a public-private partnership between the premier Cherry Creek Arts Festival, the

Cherry Creek North subarea Business Improvement District, and the Denver Botanic

Gardens to create a sculpture garden as a means to capitalize on these public spaces by

attracting more visitors and thus more tourist spending (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012).

Much of the emphasis placed on branding and marketing the neighborhood is

based in the expectation that Cherry Creek is expected to grow over the next two decades.

“This growth has the potential to benefit existing businesses, property owners and

residents through greater diversity of housing types, increased business revenues, higher

property values, additional public and private investment and a greater diversity of shops,

restaurants and cultural amenities” (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 29). The Areas of

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Change in Cherry Creek are perceived to be the areas that can best accommodate this

growth, both in terms of market demand and available land. The plan notes that not every

property or area will see redevelopment but that overall the entire Cherry Creek

neighborhood will “benefit from new development, reinvestment, and more intense use”

Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 29).

Cherry Creek’s designation in the Denver Comprehensive Plan 2000 is as a

premier retail destination. The neighborhood generates nearly 5% of Denver’s sales tax

revenue on 0.14% of Denver’s land area (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012). As the plan states:

Enhancing the attractiveness and competitiveness as a mixed-use neighborhood with local, regional and national appeal is essential to the economic well-being of the Cherry Creek Area and the City. Optimizing economic and development opportunities benefits residents as well as businesses with more choice of shops and restaurants, access to amenities, and attractive street and building design. National research and best practices are demonstrating that walkable, mixed-use communities are desirable for all age groups and have retained their value and thrived in tough economic times (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 44).

As this quote from the 2012 plan shows, the belief of city planners in the economic

planning model is that economic development benefits businesses as well as residents

(Cherry Creek Plan, 2012).

Much of the strategy to capitalize on the growth in the Cherry Creek area lies in

creating a pedestrian district, utilizing design and architecture standards (through

setbacks and public space requirements), through specified land use, and by creating

access to and from the neighborhood’s shopping and amenities. Additionally, the plan

seeks to utilize public infrastructure investments because “successful streetscape design

reinforces the pedestrian scale and character and enhances the quality, identity, physical

function, and economic vitality of an area” (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 42).

The plan suggests that continued success in sustaining the economic prosperity of

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this area of Denver depends on attracting more visitors and tourists to the area, and by

creating higher density residential areas in order to have more people live within walking

distance of the business and retail areas (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012). The 2012 plan

suggests that the Cherry Creek Neighborhood currently has substantial market surplus in

almost every category of retail. Thus, economic success depends on bringing more

shoppers who do not live in the neighborhood into the area through better transit options

and a pedestrian atmosphere (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012). The plan states “hotel guests add

necessary pedestrian vitality, supporting the surrounding businesses and restaurants. The

lodging and meeting/event facilities are important to area businesses, as well” (Cherry

Creek Plan, 2012, p. 45). The plan also notes the tourist-focused nature of the

neighborhood when it states “visitors whether families coming for a day, hotel guests

coming for a week, or conventioneers seeing the sites are an important economic driver

for Cherry Creek retail” (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 46).

The 2012 plan claims that the shopping center brings an estimated 1.3 million

visitors per month, of whom three in ten are tourists from outside Colorado’s Front

Range and suggests partnerships with the downtown neighborhood, Denver International

Airport and the conventions bureau at Visit Denver will only become more important

(Cherry Creek Plan, 2012). The plan states, “adding more rooms in Cherry Creek and

improving access to and from Downtown (especially Denver Union Station, the

Convention Center and 14th Street hotels, the Theatre District, and the 16th Street Mall)

and Colorado Boulevard hotels is important” (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 46-47). The

strategy is logically consistent as more hotels mean more tourists and visitors, more

tourists and visitors mean more shoppers, and more shoppers mean more tax revenues.

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In addition to a reputation as a premier retail destination, the Cherry Creek

Neighborhood has become a recognized office sector in Denver. The 2012 plan claims

that 14,500 people are employed in the Cherry Creek Neighborhood and notes the area is

“increasingly a regional hub for financial services, and it also attracts advertising,

creative media, architecture and design firms, as well as boutique medical offices”

(Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 45). The plan continues that “continuing to provide high

quality office space for these boutique firms and creative industries is essential to the

mixed-use character of Cherry Creek and the continued attraction of a broad demographic

of visitors” (Cherry Creek Plan, 2012, p. 45). As can be derived from this quote, the

focus is economic development through attracting business services and creative

knowledge-based industries as well as small-scale meetings and conventions.

Fundamentally different than the 1981 plan, the strategy of the 2012 plan is

primarily focused on promoting economic development and growth. The 2012 plan seeks

to promote tourism through shopping, arts and culture; finance and business services

through provision of office and meeting space; and entertainment through arts, culture

and a connection to the Cherry Creek Greenway. As can clearly be drawn from this

review, the changes between the 1976 plan to the 2012 plan show how the neighborhood

planning process has shifted from providing stable residential areas, and thus focusing on

social reproduction, to providing a guide for economic development opportunities.

Though the Cherry Creek Neighborhood was a thriving retail and commercial district in

the 1970s, much as it is currently, the focus of the planning has changed to one that

actively supports continued economic development and growth, rather than residential

stability.

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CHAPTER IV

THE CHANGING FACE OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT

The effects of globalization, the emergence of a post-industrial economy, and

neoliberal economic reforms are part of the modern economic playing field and likely are

here to stay. Technological advances in communication and connectivity, and an

increasing international flow of capital and people resulting from globalization have

brought countries, peoples, and economies closer together. Neoliberal economic reforms

have led to increased competition among cities and countries as trade barriers are

removed and new labor forces enter the market. As traditional industrial sectors of

manufacturing and agricultural production increasingly move to developing countries,

traditional industrial powers such as the United States must develop new post-industrial

economic sectors with an increasing focus on creative, knowledge-based, and commercial

and business service sectors.

As the United States continues to move towards a post-industrial economy, urban

communities feel compelled to find new ways of stimulating economic growth as

political, business, and other elite interests continue to push municipal governments to

focus on economic development in order to survive in the global marketplace. As

economic growth increasingly becomes a function of local government, these urban

growth regimes have turned towards entrepreneurial and corporate management styles,

increasing amounts of strategic planning, and innovative financing techniques to

stimulate this growth. These entrepreneurial management styles infect the local planning

and community development departments, and economic development increasingly

replaces social reproduction as the primary focus of community planning efforts.

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By focusing on neighborhood plans completed by the City of Denver’s

Community Planning and Development Department, this study has demonstrated that

strategic economic development planning not only is the primary focus of citywide

comprehensive plans but also defines recent neighborhood planning efforts. By

investigating the planning efforts of three Denver neighborhoods, examples of a primary

focus on economic planning even at the neighborhood level have been detailed. Though

economic planning efforts continue to contain bromides geared towards traditional social

reproduction goals, these efforts are meant to be a component of an overall economic

growth strategy, and do not reflect a primary aim to stabilize residential neighborhoods

and strengthen the working class.

The City of Denver incorporates marketing and branding, the leveraging of public

infrastructure, capitalization on cultural, entertainment, and recreational amenities, and

the building of symbolic developments in neighborhood planning efforts as a means to

attract investment, growth and economic development. Through neighborhood planning

efforts, the City of Denver attempts to create a welcoming business climate and a high

quality of life to attract financial and professional service sector jobs, and the creative-

class young professionals that staff these jobs. Neighborhood planning efforts seek to

capitalize on cultural diversity, arts, historical features, and entertainment venues as a

means to strengthen tourism-centered sectors of the economy and to attract suburban

visitors, conventions, and international tourists.

The research suggests that each city and urban area copes with these changing

economic and global forces in different ways that reflect the different characteristics and

dynamics of the individual neighborhood. Each neighborhood area seeks to leverage

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different strengths and amenities and employs different economic development actors;

just as each neighborhood area deals with unique constituencies, different community

standards, different forms of local governance, and different urban growth regimes. This

suggests there is no one standard, no one right way to stimulate economic development as

each city and each small neighborhood area plan represents a unique approach to

planning for economic growth. Many of the plans acknowledge the importance of a

healthy and stable neighborhood, and of maintaining certain equity planning measures

such as public education, parks and recreation, employment programs, job training, and

social services. In fact, as has been noted, a majority of Denver’s Neighborhoods are

considered Areas of Stability by Denver planners, which do not warrant a large amount

of effort to stimulate growth and economic development. However, through Blueprint

Denver’s (2000) mechanism of designating Areas of Change targeted for economic

growth, the study clearly shows a shift in Denver’s Community and Planning Department

towards an economic planning model, and the risks this change brings to low-income

“areas of change.”

Another conclusion suggests that planning efforts reflect contemporary public

opinion, power dynamics, and political ideology. The rise of Keynesian economics that

paralleled the professionalization of planning over the middle of the 20th century led the

pendulum of professional planning to swing towards the equity side of the spectrum

during the 1960s and 1970s. The rise of Neoliberal economic theory and the ascendency

of pro-business President Ronald Reagan and his followers over the past three plus

decades, however, has led the balance of planning efforts to swing to the economic

planning model. This swing has led to increasing entrepreneurial and corporate municipal

109

governing styles. The role of planners in the process of preparing citywide,

neighborhood, and small area plans deserves further study.

This study also concludes that planning efforts, aside from a few extreme cases

such as Norman Krumholz in Cleveland, have always followed a hybrid model. Both

generations of plans deal with both equity planning goals of social reproduction as well

as economic planning goals of stimulating economic growth. However, the later

generation of plans contain sections that go much more in depth on the subject of

economic development and growth. The effectiveness and level of success that Denver

has seen in economic development through coordinated neighborhood planning efforts

suggests that planning needs a balance of both equity and economic planning in order to

succeed. As the planning profession seeks to define the role of neighborhood and small

area plans over the next century it will be important to reflect upon these planning efforts

with an understanding of the balance between equity and economic planning.

110

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