We are fortunate in the Denver area to have forward thinking and ecologically minded municipalities that have made the necessary changes to their outdated zoning codes to allow for mixed-use development. Denver and surrounding areas have some great new urbanist communities, I’m starting a series where I critique each one of them and see how they live up to new urbanist ideals.
Stapleton
Stapleton is the Colorado new urbanist community that has appeared the most in the press. I’ve seen articles on it in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Sunset magazine, and many others. Stapleton is a HUGE mixed-use development located just east of downtown Denver at the site of the former Stapleton airport. This development gets big points for revamping what could have been a very blighted site into a vibrant, mixed-use community. Stapleton’s only drawback in my mind is its size: the place is enormous, and walking to a downtown area is not possible from many homes. Also many of the streets are very, very long, giving the area a Byzantine feel, instead of the “outdoor room”and cozy feel many new urbanist planners strive for.
Downtown Area: Stapleton has several retail areas, but only one of them currently is really like a small downtown area that residents can walk to. The other retail areas in Stapleton are like an outdoor mall separated from homes, and a big-box strip mall (bowing I’m sure, to economic necessity, I don’t knock them for this). The one current downtown section however, has some excellent business in it, like a wonderful little independent flower shop that sets their flowers out on the sidewalk during warmer weather, and Udi’s Bistro, a supremely excellent restaurant that has to-die- for bread and wonderful, original food.
Architecture-How non cookie-cutter?: I like that Stapleton mixes many different types of housing, they really have it all: single family homes, townhomes, for rental apartments that are really cool, and affordable housing. I also like that Stapleton has included modern architecture in the mix, a lot of those buildings are very cool and painted fun, bright colors. The single family homes are all traditional architecture, and because of Stapleton’s size, it can get a bit of a cookie-cutter look (although by no means to the degree of a normal subdivision).
Open Spaces/Parks: Excellent. Beyond excellent. Stapleton has the best parks and pools of any new urbanist community I’ve seen anywhere. The parks range in size from HUGE to small, neighborhood size and there are tons of fun, innovative play equipment everywhere.
Walkability: Large sidewalks connecting everywhere and bike paths. However, only about 10% of the homes are a 5-10 minute walk from a retail/shopping area. Sociability: I’ve talked to several people who live in Stapleton and they describe it as very social and there are many fun events, and like many new urbanist developments, great for kids.