Not long ago, a young woman from Parker needed a little help deciding whether or not to move to Capitol Hill. So naturally, she posed her dilemma to an online community.
A simple question, but the answers she got were anything but.
“I love Cap Hill, it's one of my favorite neighborhoods. There are a lot of great independent bars, shops and restaurants within walking distance,” Eric B. advised.
Whereas Daniel J. suggested Congress Park might be a better option. Still close to downtown, he told her, but “much quieter.”
Parking–or the lack of it--came up a lot. But so did words like “charm” and “historic” and “great city living.”
“I love the older quaint buildings and the big old trees,” said recent Capitol Hill resident Susan Newman. “I also enjoyed its walkability, grocery stores, restaurants and two great parks.”
But after several years Newman found herself planning her activities around if and when she would be able to park. If returning home late at night, she worried about having to walk several blocks from a parking space to her apartment. When she heard a nice affordable apartment had opened up by City Park, Newman moved. Convenience had become a weightier factor than charm.
Meanwhile, on another online site, one visitor’s question about Cap Hill home prices sparked a long conversation comparing life in the vibrant, thrumming downtown neighborhood to the quiet, parking-plentiful existence of Highlands Ranch residents.
And there you have the difficulty of trying to define what makes a livable neighborhood: One person’s paradise is another’s purgatory.
To the 20-somethings who populate Capitol Hill, livable-neighborhood necessities include nightlife, plentiful craft beer, mass transit. These are the very things families with kids try to escape, trading all that for parks and schools.
And then there are the experts. According to Livable City, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, environmental sustainability, from flourishing retail to robust public health, is key.
To researchers at AARP, each neighborhood “should have a distinct character, but each should be complete, supporting living, working, commerce, and culture.”
“Communities do define it differently,” said Caryn Champine, director of planning services for the city of Denver.
Denver’s city planners know a thing or two about how different residents of different neighborhoods define livability.
They’ve asked–and heard the opinions of–thousands of Denver residents since 2016 when they began work on Denveright, a community-led effort to design a plan for Denver’s future.
“We started with values conversation: What’s most important to you,” Champine said. “And ultimately what we heard was it everyone has different needs.”
For instance, she said, “Westwood has a strong Latino/Latina culture, and we heard them say they want to keep that. Southmoor Park neighborhood has a different character. They want different things.”
There were common threads, though. One of those was access, she said. Wherever they live, whatever their age, people don’t want to be, or to feel, shut out. “They want access – whether it be to jobs, schools, parks.”
People also seem to universally want affordable housing choices, economic diversity, employment diversity, and environmental resiliency, she said.
In 2016, when 5280 Magazine ranked Denver’s best neighborhoods, they used quantifiable criteria, like home prices, crime rates and school ratings.
Capitol Hill came in at number 39, dragged down by its poor “safety” ranking and a low score for its schools, which, arguably, nobody moves to Capitol Hill for anyway.
Wash Park ranked surprisingly low, at number nine. But it scored highest in a category called the “X Factor,” with Capitol Hill close on its heels in that category. The X Factor is the intangible, un-scorable quality that makes you want to be in a place.
And often, that’s what defines livability for an individual – something you just can’t put a name to.
Asked what made his old neighborhood livable, or likable, former Wash Park resident Robert Gurle -- recently back to for a visit and feeding squirrels in the neighborhood’s namesake green space – furrowed his brow and thought for a moment. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. I mean, what’s not to like?”
