Attention Denver Developers, City Planners and YIMBYs: Stop telling us that the "vision" for Denver is for people not to own cars, which is the justification developers use to say that they don't need to build the required amount of parking spaces. Of course people will own cars, how else would they get to the mountains, the main reason many move here? There is no affordable or convenient public transportation going to the mountains, so of course they will have to own cars to get there. And they will have to park those cars outside their housing, whether low-income or not. Many lower income people will not go car-less, they will just have older, less expensive cars. Additionally, there is no way that the developers can enforce a no-car policy for residents that will be moving into the new housing units. Once they build it, they leave the parking and congestion issues to the neighborhood.
The mountains are one of the main reasons they relocate to Denver, and you can't get there without a car. So developers, we're tired of hearing the excuse that the "vision for Denver" is to have high density with less cars, that is a fantasy thought up so that you can justify building more units with less parking to make more money.
The huge amount of density building that has been completed in the past decade along with the current construction of units already underway now is already putting a huge strain on our roads and air. Don't put the cart before the horse, Denver first needs to work on solving it's public transportation system and air pollution before we add thousands more cars to our roads.
Denver/Aurora is in the top 10 of the most polluted metro areas in the country!
Since 2008, Colorado has violated federal air quality health standards regularly. Denver's air quality is terrible, metro Denver residents in 2018 inhaled elevated levels of pollution on 282 days, including 225 days of moderate degradation, 49 days deemed unhealthy for sensitive groups and eight days deemed unhealthy for all, according to federal records. The daily Denver commuters and mountain traffic pour significant amounts of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and other pollution into our air every single day. We should be working on reducing car emissions, and improving our public transportation first to make it affordable and convenient to get to the front range suburbs and the mountains. Also, rather than focusing on building density by covering every inch of available ground in Denver, we should instead work on preserving all open space available, so people don't feel that they have to "escape" Denver's density and go to the mountains every chance they get. If we keep as many parks, open spaces and natural areas free from development, people can enjoy the outdoors right in the heart in the city, no car needed.