Thesis (M.A.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 25, 2007). "Specialization: Adult Learning & Media Development"--T.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Anne E. Beamish / One of the most important aspects of a public space is its accessibility and inclusivity for all people. In urban parks, this often means that a wide variety of users must be considered during the design process. Denver Civic Center Park is a historic urban park in the heart of Denver’s downtown. The park caters to a variety of people ranging from tourist, who briefly visit the park, to people who are experiencing homelessness, and call the park home. Ensuring that the needs of people varying in age, culture, and economic background is key to any urban park’s success. Semi-structured interviews, site observations, site inventory and analysis, and critical mapping helped assess Denver’s Civic Center Park’s inclusivity and accessibility. Through a combination of improved infrastructure and additional amenities, a thoughtful redesign of the historic park addressed today’s challenges with homelessness and created a more inclusive environment. Because of the historic nature of the park only specific modifications to the southern ares were made. There are two reasons to create inclusive public spaces. The first is the social mixing that comes from people of different backgrounds and cultures sharing a safe environment. Social mixing connects groups of people through passive and active interactions that are built on seeing someone or overhearing their conversations. Social interactions, that take place in a safe environment, can trigger empathy within the community and start to build relationships between people of different socioeconomic groups. The second reason focuses on the ethics of designing public space. The infrastructure and policy of a public space should not be exclusive to a “desirable” demographic, but should include all existing users and the surrounding community. Because a large portion of users in Denver’s Civic Center Park are people experiencing homelessness, the design and programmatic amenities should consider their needs and desires. Landscape architects can influence the public’s views and the way people interact with each other by designing safe and active urban public spaces. In this project I asked, what design policies and strategies could be implemented to make Denver’s Civic Center Park more inclusive and secure for all park users, including those experiencing homelessness?

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-73). / This thesis examines a process for future city growth in Denver, Colorado. Its objective is to develop a model by which future expansion of the city might build qualities of continuity and identity between adjacent sections of the city and the Platte River through the revitalization and extension of network edges. Present growth trends in Denver have altered traditional city network relationships. The exchange between movement systems, building forms and landscape has deteriorated resulting in the isolation of the pedestrian edges which once made Denver a city of vitality. This thesis begins with observations of a specific problem of discontinuity within Denver's Platte River Valley. It then outlines goals for future growth. The third section defines the task of seaming together valley districts. The fourth section documents a method for analysis and extension. The last section includes strategies and design projections to illustrate how districts of the city might grow, with examples of extensions from a regional size, to examinations in more detail of landscape network and building relationships. / by James A. Sobey. / M.Arch.

Universiẗat, Diss, --Bremen, 2005. / Literaturverz. S. 368 - 379.

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1987. / Folded map in pocket. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-103).

Thesis (M.S.M.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Aug. 29, 2006). Includes bibliographical references.

This work will explore the interconnections between political power and the various forms of corruption endemic in Denver in the late 19th century placing municipal corruption and election fraud into the larger political, economic, social and cultural framework. Municipal political corruption in Denver operated through a series of relationships tying together, the city police, political factions, utility and industrial leaders, con men, gamblers, protection rackets and the election of U.S. Senators. This work will explore not only the operational ties, but also how these ties served all parties, and the discourse used to rationalize the behavior and distribute blame. The dates for this study are bracketed by two significant events: a mayoral election and trial in 1889-1890, and the City Hall War in the spring of 1894. Each of these events represents a point when a rupture in the tight net of political control sparked a battle for hegemony with a concomitant turn to corruption and election fraud on the part of competing political factions. The level of municipal corruption in Denver was not necessarily unusual; however, the extent of the documentation enables a detailed analysis. Denver newspapers blamed the corruption on an unspecified "gang" and a shadowy "machine." The editors railed against the scourge of con men, and simultaneously used the ubiquitous fraud as a metaphor for trickery and corruption of all kinds. This detailed analysis reveals a more complex series of events through which a cabal of business and industry leaders seized control of both the city and the state government, giving them the political power to wage what has been called a war against labor.

The economic impact of legalized marijuana has been massive, but does legal marijuana have the impact to create new types of urban spaces? The legalization of formerly illicit vices has created urban spaces thematically constructed around vice, such as The Strip in Las Vegas (gambling) or The Wallen in Amsterdam (prostitution). This paper suggests that legalized marijuana similarly has the potential to construct vice-themed urban spaces in a post-industrial economic paradigm defined by consumption. Using Denver’s South Broadway (an urban area that has been rebranded as “The Green Mile” due to the outgrowth of marijuana businesses in the area) as the foundation for the analysis, this paper uses qualitative methodologies including historical and content analysis and interviews to examine how marijuana becomes normalized through legalization and resituated for mass consumption, in turn creating the possibility for the construction of thematic urban spaces.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 501-519). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Smart growth tools address a diverse range of specific concerns, including historic preservation, farmland protection, habitat conservation, flexible architectural design, and expedited land development. Smart growth unites the traditionally separate and competing growth promotion and growth control measures into a single growth accommodation approach. In addition to these important concepts, Henry R. Richmond posits that smart growth must now be explained within the context of “new urbanism” and “new regionalism.” What smart growth tries to accomplish is thus development with implied improvements in quality of life and environmental protection rather than mere urban growth or economic expansion per se. An important obstacle to smart growth measures is that growth problems rarely respect political boundaries. Scattered development patterns, as well as the traffic congestion, environmental degradation, fiscal stresses, and other problems that often accompany them, tend to be regional in nature, extending beyond the boundaries of any one locality. Accordingly, many growth problems are better addressed through regional solutions that federal, state and local smart growth measures my not provide. The general premise of “new regionalism” is that the economic health of the city and its outlying areas are inseparably intertwined, and that without regional planning and programs, individual jurisdictions in a single region compete with one another for limited resources and economic investment. New regionalists typically advocate from one of these three competing positions: greater economic prosperity, increased environmental protection, or improved social equity. Consequently, many politicians, advocates and activists are calling for the implementation of integrated policies that address the interrelatedness of all regional challenges, including housing, transportation, water, sewage, and other regional physical infrastructure systems. Denver evidences a suite of tensions between the promise and outcomes of planning with a wider, regional applicability. On the one hand, there is a progressiveness that embraces regional governance, growth management, economic vitality and quality infrastructure. But on the other hand, there is the reality of city sprawl, competitive local government relationships, and a convergence of interest between citizen choice and development industry behavior. This report will illustrate three issues regarding effective and efficient regional planning implementation at local, state and federal levels in the context of regional planning efforts in the Denver Metro Area. First, why does infill development and economic revitalization not only benefit the central city but the region as a whole? Secondly, how do land-use assignments and development design, like Smart Growth and New Urbanism, encourage regional planning efforts towards integrated mass transit? Finally, How does government fragmentation and overlap contribute to the lack of regional consensus and efficient planning? / text