“Blueprint America: Road to the Future,” airs Wednesday night on Rocky Mountain PBS and looks at three cities: Denver, Portland and New York. The engaging documentary explores decisions the cities made over the past half-century and is a treatise on vision, leadership and backbone — the trifecta of political consequence.
We know how small-town, livable Denver morphed into Mega-Denver. The malling and sprawling of the region was symbolized by Highlands Ranch — wide streets, skinny sidewalks, front yards dominated by oversized garages and lack of buses, bike trails or neighborhood centers. Our horizontal and now unsustainable auto metropolis was the consequence of federal policy, the 1956 Federal Highway Act. The program offered metro areas 90 cents on the dollar to build a national freeway system. Denver, like most other cities, agreed, and the die was cast.
Fast-forward to the 1970s, the beginnings of Highlands Ranch and its counterpoint. Then-Gov. Dick Lamm threatened to “drive a silver stake” through the Interstate 470 beltway. This federal honey-pot again offered easy money, quick real estate plays and the American dream — an oversized garage attached to a mortgage and a back yard. Lamm succeeded in delaying the beltway, but the wrath of real estate interests and the press transformed his stake into a boomerang, thoroughly marginalizing the young governor.
While Lamm was left licking his wounds, Portland was being tempted by the same siren’s song: big federal dollars to build the Mount Hood Freeway. But then-City Councilman Earl Blumenauer (now a congressman) rallied local activists to oppose speculators who were determined to demolish miles of historic urban fabric to build an eight-lane freeway through the heart of southeast Portland.
The issue dominated local elections throughout the 1970s. But Blumenauer and his allies prevailed, persuading the feds to give Portland the same 90-10 match that Denver accepted, but instead dedicating the money to bike paths, light rail and eventually streetcars. Today, human-scaled, well-integrated neighborhoods lure private investment to Portland.
In 2007, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced an aggressive initiative to make the city fully sustainable by 2030. Then he put his considerable capital behind the vision.
Leading the transformation is Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn. She has reduced automobile lanes, converting them to bike paths and public plazas, improving mobility for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders. In barely three years, she has increased Manhattan’s bike lanes from 220 to 420 miles and converted traffic lanes into nearly 50 acres of public plaza.
Blueprint America is more than a tutorial on urban planning and its consequences. It is a thoughtful and provocative study of human nature and political courage.
Susan Barnes-Gelt (sbg13@comcast.net) served on the Denver City Council.
