Impressions of not-Denver
I never actually made it to Denver this week. We stayed in a northern suburb of the city, and the company we were there to visit is based in a separate city somewhere between Denver and Boulder. I’d love to talk about how awesome the company is, but I agreed to some pretty strict conditions just to get in the building, so instead I’m going to talk about the vast wastelands of suburban Denver.
Yeah, vast wastelands. I mean, Jersey-suburbia is bad enough—as far as I know, we invented suburbs. But Bergen county doesn’t come close to what I saw earlier this week in central Colorado in terms of sprawl.
Let me present exhibit A, a map of the general area where we stayed. Notice the large grid pattern of the primary roads. Now notice how most of the rectangles created by said grid are only partially filled-in. From what I could tell, in the two days we spent driving around, there are two options for developing a parcel of land there:
- mini shopping mall
- generic housing development
There is literally a different shopping mall every other block in the northern suburbs of Denver. Except, there’s only so far an adjective like “different” can go in such circumstances, and you wind up with an endless iteration of Wal-Mart/K-Mart/Target-mart as you drive down 120th St: sprawling monuments to consumerism on every other city block.
Someday I’d like to visit Denver proper, because I hear it’s a pretty nifty city. But next time somebody busts my chops about New Jersey’s malls, I’m going to tell him to check out Northglenn, Westminster, and Broomfield, CO.
February 25, 2005 - 02:51 PM