Medium published a critique on Denver growth by local writer Nate Ragolia.
Excerpt:
Today, we’re somewhere near the peak of an incredible real estate boom in the Mile High City. Rents are soaring (just this year mine increased 15%) and the housing market is a shark tank in which first-time buyers are the chum. We applaud our city for its popularity, and its continued success while most of the country stagnates in slumping markets… but we shouldn’t. Denver is missing its last opportunity to become a world-class, 21st Century city. It’s choosing, instead, to be an average, 20th Century American city, and that means we all lose out on something special.
The insurgence of outside real estate investors and costly condo developments, and luxury apartments in the near-Downtown neighborhoods are killing Denver. This boom needs corresponding moderately priced and affordable housing companions, but neither can be found. The Near-Downtown neighborhoods, once gritty and creative, loaded with passion to make our city an artistic and musical mecca are choking out their young, in favor of high-priced developments and suburb-employed commuters. Vibrant, resurgent and diverse neighborhoods are getting facelifts, but the underlying substance is being swept away. On the balance sheet, this is progress, but it means Denver may become another failed commuter metropolis, packed with discontented and alienated citizens.
Read the rest
here.
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