Who's Your Denver?

The greater Denver metropolitan area scores highly on a new set of rankings my team and I compiled based on the five major stages of your life. Denver itself ranks in the Top 10 places for young professionals. And Boulder ranks in the Top 5 smaller regions for single college grads, young professionals, familes with children and empty-nesters.

But there is an even bigger economic factor that bodes well for the region's fortunes. With nearly 4 million people and $140 billion in economic activity, it ranks as one of the top dozen mega-regions in the United States. In fact, it's one of the 40 leading mega-regions that power the entire global economy.

The rest is here.

Comments

[Luke]

The picture of Denver that emerges via statistical comparisons is drastically different from the qualitative reality many people in the greater Denver metropolitan area actually experience.

While not mentioned, this region has been home to some of the largest sustained population growth in the United States over the last decade. Unfortunately, much of growth has occurred in the southern suburbs of Denver resulting in truly egregious and indistinguishable suburban sprawl. Essentially, an entire generation has moved to this area and grown up without an identifiable sense of place. The idea of anomie only begins to describe this type of listless environment (that was not worth building to begin with and is certainly difficult to justify defending or dying for).

I would challenge the notion that the metropolitan area has great schools. Overcrowding is a serious issue even with the almost continuous construction of 2000-3000 student public high schools. Having 35 students or more in a class is not great, and neither is going to class in a temporary tailor. Great schools don’t have record setting school shooting like the one in Littleton at Columbine. Also, undergraduate and graduate admission figures from the University of Denver and the University of Colorado show that it’s becoming harder to gain admission than ever before, and this seems likely only to continue. Interestingly, while this region includes the most affluent county in the state (Douglas), and one of the most affluent congressional district in the entire country (6th); even for residents of this area it’s still incredible difficult to pay tuition costs at these schools.

The standard for good roads and public transportation is probably relative, but the massive T-Rex program to improve transportation infrastructure has only helped marginally with capacity while actually lengthening the commute for certain passengers. This seems like a rather mild complaint until you realize the people affected where standing outside waiting for buses or trains before the sun came up and after it went down last year during the worst winter in three decades.

In terms of physical security the area is absolutely replete with high-value military installations that would be very tempting sites for terrorist attacks. Incidentally, it has been documented recently that the Lebanese terror group Hizbollah has been conducting fundraising operations in Colorado. Also, while not in the direct vicinity of Denver, there was a noteworthy eco-terrorism arson attack by the ELF in Vail that caused millions of dollars in damage.