By Jennifer T. Moulton and Bill Hornby

Blueprint Denver, our city's first integrated land-use and transportation plan, passed the City Council earlier this month by an 11-1 vote. It is now a legal part of the city's Comprehensive Plan 2000, and is arguably the final and most crucial piece of a two-decade planning and administrative effort to care for our city's population growth and to spark the economic development to support it.

In the next 20 years, the Denver Regional Council of Governments predicts the City and County of Denver will add some 132,000 residents. The rest of the metro area will receive another 760,000, which will add some pressure to the city. Facing the traffic congestion, neighborhood disruption, human isolation and inconvenience, as well as the residential and commercial building shortage these numbers suggest, Comprehensive Plan 2000 asked for a supplemental plan. This was to be more specific about solutions than plans normally are, and to be more rigorous in locating people where they have more choices than the automobile to get around. With cars clogging Denver's arteries, the city needs some bypass surgery. In the past, city planners have usually treated transportation and land use separately. The right hand of public-works planners has not been overly aware of what the left hand of other city planners was doing. But in Blueprint Denver's case, the city's Public Works department pitched in to the planning effort, as have many council persons, 46 members of an advisory committee, and many hundreds of other Denver citizens who appeared at public hearings, open houses in each of the 13 council districts, and at a great number of impassioned neighborhood discussions. Under Mayors Federico Pen~a (1983-1991) and Wellington Webb (1991 to the present), the city began a newly aggressive partnership with established business, philanthropic real estate and state and regional political leadership. The imperative goal was to jointly lead in absorbing and managing short-term growth and in spurring long-term economic development as the decent livelihood base for more and more people.

This progressive partnership of the 1980s-'90s was in large part fruitful, as a look through any 2002 windshield will testify. Plans are often musty stuff, but they stimulate development projects, public bond issues, essential private investment, and prioritize citizen and government actions. Reflect on the ongoing results of the most aggressive Denver planning effort in decades: the Downtown Area Plan of 1986; Mayor Webb's Downtown Revival Summit Plans of 1991-1995; the Central Platte Valley and River Plans of 1986-1991; the Denver Comprehensive Plan in 1989; the DIA Gateway Concept Plan in 1990; Lowry Airfield Reuse Plan in 1993; and the Stapleton Development Plan in 1995.

These and some 40 neighborhood plans and small area studies, with the metropolitan Vision 2020 of DRCOG, were all added by the City Council as supplements to Comprehensive Plan 2000. Their results were as substantial as those of any metropolis in the country at century's end.

But today, again facing recession with new tests ahead, the city planning effort with Blueprint Denver on line has a different sort of challenge: to leave to successive councils and administrations an even more comprehensive framework from which to navigate the 2000s. This will become a historic legacy to Denver from the 10 of 13 council members who, with Mayor Webb, will be term-limited out of office next year. These departures of experience and continuity emphasize Blueprint Denver's role as the capstone piece of one planning era, but also the crucial portion of a new one. Blueprint Denver suggests that transportation and land-use improvements be joined at the hip, and that population growth be distributed over Denver in a more sensible fashion. It offers the heretical thought that some of the new population growth be directed toward specifically identified areas of change, where economic and mobility needs could be satisfied and welcomed. It also suggests we restrain unbridled growth from areas of stability, primarily residential neighborhoods.

The division of the city into these two future development categories was adopted by Blueprint Denver planners after strong support gleaned from intensive public discussion. The plan describes areas of stability as including "the vast majority of Denver, primarily established residential neighborhoods and their associated commercial areas, where limited change is expected during the next 20 years. The goal ( for these areas) is to identify and maintain the character of an area while accommodating some new development and redevelopment." "The purpose of areas of change," the Blueprint continues, "is to channel growth where it will be beneficial and can best improve access to jobs, housing and services with fewer and shorter auto trips. Areas of change are parts of the city where most people agree that development or redevelopment would be beneficial with a high priority on ensuring that existing residents will not be displaced. Opportunities for pedestrian oriented, mixed-use (residential and commercial) development can be found in most of these areas."

The Blueprint Denver planners identified a number of areas of change, many of which are already well into the change process. They now have varying degrees of residential and commercial development and transportation access, but also can still easily handle greater numbers of people. These include the larger areas of Gateway (DIA), old Stapleton, old Lowry, east Hampden Boulevard, Cherry Creek, transit-oriented developments along Interstate 25, Colfax and Broadway.

Then there's the vibrantly reviving downtown area, which includes LoDo, the Platte Valley, uptown along 17th Avenue, and the Golden Triangle south of Civic Center. Other, less-recognized areas that can change include Brighton Boulevard and the northeast industrial area, increasingly used as a gateway into central Denver from Interstate 70; the northeast downtown area in the Coors Field neighborhood, and central industrial area in the southern Platte Valley.

Less developed areas that may show promise for greater mixed-use residential and commercial growth include West 38th Avenue, West Alameda, Morrison Road, South Federal and South Broadway. Other areas of change' will no doubt develop and some will fade away as time goes on and more people move in. The process of planning on a detailed scale and encouraging market investment in these areas will take years. Blueprint Denver suggests a new, smaller area planning effort to begin now to detail how it might happen. It also suggests that existing stable neighborhoods be reviewed for possible character-preserving improvement and reinvestment. In Blueprint Denver, a designated area of stability is not by any means destined to become an area of stagnation.

Blueprint Denver also specifies that a substantial revision of Denver's zoning code is in order. The plan itself does not change any zoning anywhere, but it has set in motion the process to streamline the current zoning code, which is monstrously complicated and encyclopedic. The results will come before the current City Council next year. Reshaping the code is essential for easier citizen use and understanding as well for laying the foundation for a more sensible distribution of population. All of the above-mentioned plans for Denver have championed revitalizing the current zoning code, which was last revised in the 1950s. Another imperative for success of Blueprint Denver's goals is support for the regional transit objectives of DRCOG and the citywide ones of the Regional Transportation District. For Blueprint Denver, the objectives are not only light rail along well-planned corridors, but also improved bus service, special highway High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, commuter rail, and attention through improved street design to the older transit modes of foot and bicycles. The plan stresses development of mixed-use residential and commercial centers near major transit stops. It suggests that 132,000 new people in Denver need to have better choices than they currently do to get to jobs, schools, stores or recreation.

Planners know that any concept takes time to produce results, and that they will certainly not come at an orderly or speedy pace. But they also know that the ideas that good plans put forward finally do achieve significant results if they address the problems sure to arise. One such problem is the expected population growth over the next few decades in Denver. Whether it will choke the city depends on whether we sensibly prepare to receive it.

Click here to read more aboutBlueprint Denver. Jennifer T. Moulton is director of the Denver Community Planning and Development Agency. Bill Hornby, a former editor of The Denver Post, is chairman of the Denver Planning Board.