The rate of Denver’s growth is one of the highest in the nation. With this growth has come benefits, such as an extremely low unemployment rate and a strong economy. Yet the pace of growth has also produced challenges for the region, particularly related to mobility and transportation, housing access and affordability, natural resources, access to amenities, and education.
The City of Denver has teamed up with CityCenter, a new initiative at the University of Colorado Denver to foster a relationship between the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and the state’s only public urban research university. The partnership is modeled off of other partnerships between urban research universities and cities, including New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress and the University of Toronto’s School of Cities. CityCenter was created with direct involvement of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock.
CityCenter’s first initiative is titled Imagine a Great Region. Its name comes from the city’s 1982 effort to “Imagine a Great City” in a time of economic downturn and distress. Imagine a Great Region will foster cross-sector and regional conversations on growth and utilize research to inform these conversations. According to the CityCenter, the “multi-year initiative will bring together forward-thinking community partners across the Front Range to convene regional dialogues, advance knowledge and disseminate findings about managing urban growth in deliberate, sustainable and equitable ways.”
The initiative is still in its planning stages, but it represents Denver and surrounding cities’ commitment to managing and planning for growth in an equitable and sustainable way. For more information about the Imagine a Great Region project or CU Denver’s CityCenter, see the CityCenter’s website.
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