Blueprint Denver

Blueprint Denver: What's Going On?

Blueprint Denver is a land use and transportation plan that guides how growth and development will be channeled throughout the city. It is a supplement to Denver’s Comprehensive Plan 2000, and is notable for looking at how transportation affects land use to shape future growth and open space. Three basic themes within the plans include the identification of areas of change and stability, multi-modal streets, and mixed-use developments.

Its importance lies in its how the plan influences the direction of new development and where it guides new investment. It identifies areas where new development is best directed (areas of change) and where fewer changes are expected (areas of stability). For new development, the plan encourages mixed-use development, or development where residential, retail, and commercial uses are intermixed. Blueprint Denver seeks to implement the mixed-use concept to achieve its goals in downtown areas, along main streets, around rapid transit stations, town centers, and other urban places. It also aims to influence how streets are used, and to create streets that accommodate not only vehicles, but public transportation, pedestrians, and bicycles equally.

See the City of Denver’s Department of Community Planning and Development website for more on Blueprint Denver.

All In Denver's Guiding Principles for Blueprint Denver

Growth is Denver’s defining issue, and our changing city has polarized our community. As members of AllIn Denver, we believe that the Blueprint Denver Task Force, Planning Board, City Council and Mayor Hancock must be bold in re-shaping and re-imagining Blueprint Denver, and position Blueprint as a strategy to ensure amore equitable and diverse city where all people can prosper and thrive. All In Denver's guiding principles for this plan:

Blueprint Denver’s vision for our physical environment must incorporate a broad set of our community values.
Looking beyond land use, transportation and urban design, the updated Blueprint should also directly embrace the core goals of Denver’s Comprehensive Plan—Economic Opportunity, Environmental Stewardship, Equity and Engagement—in both its vision and its policy direction.
Blueprint Denver must prepare our community for growth.
We must be intentional, transparent and authentic about how our community—and all neighborhoods—must be proactive and prepare together to meet the challenges of the 100,000-plus new City & County of Denver residents projected by 2030. Accommodating population growth will look different in various parts of the city, and Blueprint needs to define policy for how that will occur.
Blueprint Denver must shape a vision beyond the city’s physical form.
Our growth has brought about intense changes and disparities to Denver’s social, economic, racial and generational fabric, even in areas where the physical realm has changed little. Any vision for land use, mobility and urban design has impacts on people and communities, so Blueprint Denver must also put into strong focus how the plan addresses economic opportunity and retaining diversity in rapidly changing neighborhoods.
Blueprint Denver must provide a more sophisticated vision for land use and transportation.
Blueprint Denver divides Denver with two labels: “Areas of Change” or “Areas of Stability.” It is smart to target new infill growth and redevelopment, but we know that the ways cities evolve defy tidy boundary lines. Our view is that Blueprint Denver’s “change-or-stability” concept is too rigid, promotes an imbalanced, inequitable and unfair distribution of Denver’s growth, and diminishes our citywide sense of community. The concept offers a rationale often used to oppose anything (and anyone) that looks like “change” in Areas of Stability, and at the same time gives rise to concerns that “anything goes” in Areas of Change. We are concerned that these dynamics will only intensify over the next 20 years, particularly as we undergo significant change. We encourage new thinking that better weaves our community values into our growth management strategies.
Blueprint Denver’s vision should emphasize innovation in housing.
An updated vision in Blueprint Denver should build a solid foundation for imaginative housing policies that address our housing shortage throughout the city, and prioritize diversity, innovation, partnerships and neighborhood equity

Opportunities

See All In Denver's event calendar for public meeting dates and times when you can be a part of the Blueprint Denver process via Denver’s Department of Community Planning and Development.