Denver and Barcelona: A tale of two cities and the apparent decline of America’s downtowns

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I’m writing this post at 39K feet over the Atlantic on my way home from eight days in Barcelona; Barcelona contrasts sharply with most American cities. For example, about one year ago I spent five days in downtown Denver, and, for one who’s worked on redevelopment and urban development in a variety of capacities for decades, the differences between Barcelona and Denver (or many cities like Denver) is depressing. The Barcelona city centre—as downtowns are called across the Pond—is alive and vibrant, while downtown Denver feels like it’s dying. Among other factors, many American cities are stuck in neutral due to?parking minimums?and an inability to build mass transit largely because of the Orwellianly named?National Environmental Protection Act?(NEPA).

Some context: I grew up on the Near Northside of Minneapolis, then a very poor immigrant Jewish, trending black, neighborhood; it was a great exciting place to be a kid with a “tippling house” (called “The Green Door:” it was an unlicensed bar) two houses away and sometimes being babysat by my dad’s shade-tree mechanic, Willie X, who was part of the emerging black Muslim community. My dad had a kosher meat market next to our house and the Black Muslims, who don’t eat pork, would buy meat at night and/or trade for services liking fixing our broken down pickup truck and car. It felt more like the Lower East Side of NYC in the 1920s than the Midwest in the 1950s.

Despite our poverty, every Saturday morning I’d take the streetcar 15 minutes to downtown Minneapolis with my mom so she could get a “wash and set;” we’d have lunch at the Woolworth’s lunch counter or similar and sometimes see a movie. We’d walk through all nine stories of the great local department store, Dayton’s, but she never bought a thing because we couldn’t afford it. I was in awe of the then-tallest building west of the Mississippi, the 27-story Foshay Tower, and the riot of restaurants, bars, and a few strip clubs on Hennepin Avenue. In short, even for a poor kid, North Minneapolis and Downtown were great urban places.

Then, the downtown went to hell: redevelopment replaced much of “blighted” downtown with soulless ’60s office buildings that lacked ground-floor retail, or anything on the street that might attract people, and a mall, while my neighborhood was demolished to be replaced with a new school and hideous housing (the City bought our house/store and we ended up in a boring, blue-collar suburb).Then came the late ’60s riots and white flight. The same pattern was true in cities across the Midwest and East Coast—NYC in 1980 was dreadful and dangerous, though artistically productive.

It took almost 30 years and the rise of?New Urbanism?to bring many American cities (at least partially) back to life—I started visiting NYC again around 2010 and, unlike the preceding visit in 1984, it was wonderful. I could stroll in Central Park and take the subway to Lincoln Center and back after midnight. Young folks flocked to downtowns to live and work, and urban planners and forward thinking developers took heed of Jane Jacobs and replaced windswept plazas with residential over retail, while community policing made cities at least feel safe.

Since COVID and the national catharsis over George Floyd, however, it seems American cities are rapidly returning to some aspects of the bad old days, while the rise of work from home means that the 20 and 30 somethings that helped revive cities don’t need to go into downtowns.

As anyone who’s been involved in urban development knows, to make cities work as a 24-hour experience, they need: new and renovated class A office space to meet emerging tenant needs, a range of housing choices, retail that is both destination (e.g., the Oculus in NYC) and local (e.g., supermarket, dry cleaners, etc.), destination and local serving restaurants and bars, good public infrastructure (e.g., safe and clean parks and efficient public transit), at least adequate public schools and some private schools, and fair and effective policing to make residents, workers, and visitors feel safe. Building a sports stadium and holding arts and food festivals are nice but do little for the long-term city vibrancy—when the game or festival is over, if the visitors leave as quickly as possible, then the sports or festivals don’t matter much. Even Lakers superfan Jack Nicholson never moved from the Hollywood Hills to live next to the Staples Center in Downtown LA.

Back to my recent experience in Denver: Since I like city life, I stayed in a high-rise hotel in dead center downtown right on the 16th Street Pedestrian Mall, instead of a suburb. I arrived on Labor Day and the Taste of Denver was going on, with throngs of people queuing up at food trucks and music stages. It superficially looked good but I quickly spotted trouble.

All of the ground-floor retail in the hotel was vacant. Both the hotel restaurant and bar were permanently closed. At check-in, the front desk clerk advised me to be “careful” where I walked during the day and stay on the Pedestrian Mall if I went out at night. Taste of Denver ended at sundown, and the happy crowds were quickly replaced by the homeless and/or drugged. I say this in an observational, not pejorative, way, and it’s apparent that Denver isn’t doing enough to get drug-treatment services to people who need them, or to build adequate affordable housing. I walked two blocks down the Mall, retreated to my room, and took Ubers at night for the rest of the visit to the few restaurants and bars that were still in business; most closed by 10 PM.

In contrast to my last Denver visit about 10 years ago, downtown had become effectively a ghost town. Even the adaptive reuse of the historic train station into a specialty mall felt moribund. I had my big Golden Retriever with me and there was a public dog park one block from the hotel, but one visit was enough: the grass in the dog park was dead and dirty. There was a homeless camp right next to the dog park, which meant used needles and harassment.

In the five days I was downtown, I never saw a single cop on foot, on a bike, or in a patrol car. If I lived in a Denver suburb, I would rarely go downtown and I will never visit again. Despite this, though, housing prices in the City of Denver?rose 8.5%?from January to September of 2022, and rents are up substantially too; hard to understand this phenomenon.

In Barcelona, I stayed in a very similar hotel in a very similar location; I was one block from a Barcelona Metro Station and I could get to the city centre and most places of interest within 25 minutes, often changing Metro lines underground in stations. There was also a trolley line and bus service right in front of my hotel. Most boulevards had safe bike lanes in the center, and taxies are everywhere. The Metro operates from 5 AM to midnight during the week and round the clock on weekends.

While the stations and subway cars are old, they are spotless—no trash, no graffiti, and, most importantly, no threatening homeless people. Even late at night, groups of young girls in club outfits were on the Metro, in the stations, and walking nearby streets, as were middle aged and older women, and I never saw any dude harassing them.

There is no litter and lots of foot traffic even late at night or early in the morning, with sidewalk bars and cafes open well after midnight. Since I had jet lag, I was in front of the hotel the first couple of days around 5 a.m. and saw many women and men walking to work.

I encountered exactly one homeless guy sprawled in a narrow alley street in the Gothic Quarter, one guy screaming at the wind, and no no obvious drug use, except for the occasional eau’d pot. I never saw cops in the Metro system, but the city seems to be mostly self-policing. In short, Barcelona is a classic livable city.

From a land use perspective, like most old European cities, the planners follow the historic building massing, so most streets have consistent four to six residential or office stories above ground-floor retail (no high rises in the city center but lots of multifamily housing). Although a working port and capital of Catalonia, Barcelona is heavily dependent on tourism. Despite the ravages of COVID, I saw few vacant storefronts but lots of renovation and modernization underway. Unlike American cities in which?NIMBYs, and the politicians NIMBYs elect, try to freeze their downtowns in aspic, Barcelona is a living and ever-changing city.

Case in point: the district I stayed in is near the beach and has been completely redeveloped with architecturally interesting and very dense high rise hotels, offices, and apartments, as well as a convention center and natural history museum. But this is modern architecture with no attempt to mimic historic Barcelona; instead a new Barcelona is being created to complement the old Barcelona.

Because of COVID, I’ve only been to Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix in the last couple of years, but what I’ve seen isn’t good. Downtown Phoenix now has it’s very own large and growing homeless encampment (https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2022/08/11/phoenix-residents-sue-city-over-states-largest-homeless-encampment/10296261002/ ).?I’ve also read about other cities like Chicago and. Philly that seem to be in decline with crime, homelessness, drug use, and urban flight rampant, though housing prices and rents continue to rise. Many American cities seem to be committing voluntary downtown civic suicide. As an old urban redeveloper, this makes me very sad, because I know how hard it is to bring a downtown back from collapse.

Still, for grant writers, urban problems are often followed by federal funding: With the passage of the several COVID funding bills, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (BIL), and humorously named Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), there’s tons of money available and soon to be available for all kinds of urban enhancement projects. Another $100M may be allocated to the?Community Oriented Police Services?(COPS) program. If you represent a nonprofit or public agency, this is the time to start researching and writing grant proposals. Don’t sit around and watch your downtown sink back into chaos.