Quote:
Originally Posted by dktshb
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The Cherry Creek area is getting better, but its a pretty good (if smaller) comparison in built form to Uptown Dallas. I used to live nearby and Denver is pretty uniformly pleasant to walk around if you’re able. If you’re disabled, the sidewalks are absolutely horrible quality most places and I am so glad Denver Deserves Sidewalks got on the ballot and passed. There are plenty of single story narrow urban format retail corridors stitching what amounts to a bungalow style single family core with various town center or mixed used style nodes. Cherry Creek, specifically, only has two major area of parking lots and they’re actually placed in an area that does not greatly affect the feeling of walkability when you’re a pedestrian. You simply don’t walk past that specific area because, well, the Cherry Creek area is designed to draw pedestrian traffic from adjacent bungalow style neighborhoods (along with vehicular traffic from city wide). The parking lots are on the other side of the Cherry Creek core from those neighborhoods. And they do have parking garages as well, which are very well hidden on the back of the mall adjacent to a well used and highly maintained greenbelt I used all the time.
A lot is being built down the road on Alameda:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/MwUsLY3NU8dY8Vis9?g_st=ic
And some more minor stuff is being extended down Leetsdale. Unfortunately, the fact that Glendale remains a renter heavy, low turnout, separate enclave municipality where the government is run based on sales tax receipts means their mayor and city council have an interest in maintaining parking lot heavy development will permanently scar the general area and limit connectivity of Cherry Creek with broader southeast Denver. There’s literally nothing Denver can do about that, and so they are unlikely to fully abandon the Cherry Creek nodes as partially designed around the vehicle. It’s a logical choice. Every city needs a high dollar area to juice public sales tax receipts and that in all honesty requires designing it to be easily used by a vehicle. As far as it goes, it’s A- (for me) for pedestrians is still pretty good.