Recap: City Transformed – Central Downtown

About the tour: This walking tour explored Central Downtown from an urban planning and development perspective. Attendees discovered how Downtown Denver grew and expanded from its early 19th century roots to the modern high-rise city of today, and how major interventions like the Skyline urban renewal project in the 1970s, the 16th Street Mall in the 1980s, the Colorado Convention Center and Light Rail in the 1990s and dozens of infill developments since 2000 have shaped the core of Downtown. Special focus was given to the 43 buildings that make up the Downtown Denver Historic District and how historic preservation and adaptive reuse have preserved many of downtown’s most important and iconic historic structures.

About the tour guide: Ken Schroeppel is the Director of Urban Design and a professor at CU Denver’s College of Architecture and Planning where he teaches urban planning and urban design. Ken is very active in Denver’s planning and design communities, having served on numerous boards and committees over the years. Ken is possibly best known as the founder and editor of the popular DenverInfill and DenverUrbanism blogs, which offer news, ideas and commentary on infill development and sustainable urbanism in the Mile High City.