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Originally Posted by laniroj
Spent some time in SLC this weekend. I've got to say, I was really impressed both by how much is going on there but also by seemingly very high quality architecture. Reminds me of Denver in the 90's on the up and up. Kudos to SLC for an amazing tree canopy in their downtown as compared to Denver. Not really any visible homeless presence either which was somewhat encouraging to what Denver might be able to do.
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I've still never made it to SLC somehow. But I spent most of last week in New York and while it goes without saying that they're in a different league, I was particularly impressed with how there are so many small residential infill buildings built all over the place on small lots with not too many units. Even though they are often taller than the older strucutres around, they don't stick out as much given the smaller footprint and their facades/building materials are a lot less objectionable. While NIMBYs and FUGLYs are gonna do their thing, if we could transport NYC incremental missing middle even the less flashy stuff from unfashionable outer borough neighborhoods, I think there'd be a lot less objection. I was impressed with the amount of incremental development going on where 5-6 story buildings are popping in 2-3 story dominated neighborhoods, and we're talking more distant parts of town like Sunset Park. Goes to show that if zoning regs were different, we could build more than just land barges and luxury duplexes here in Denver.
Also, I've always been perplexed at how East Coast cities seem to manage homelessness much better than Western US ones, but this time I was just shocked especially after things have gotten much more severe here in Denver over the last 2 years or so. Five days running all over every borough except for the Bronx (made it to Inwood, a stone's throw away), and I hardly encountered any visible homeless folks, and zero aggressive type homeless. NYC has the right to shelter, which is probably why you don't see tents there. I don't have any policy prescriptions, but after not traveling for almost two years and having downtown Denver be my primary urban environment for a long while, going somewhere urban without tent cities and zero incidents of being sketched out in a city of 8 million was sort of startling.
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