Surprise! The DenverInfill blog has a new look and is now powered by WordPress. Here’s the story behind the change and what’s in store for DenverInfill in the year to come.
You may have noticed the new tagline above. It used to say: “News, ideas, and commentary about Downtown Denver and its urban infill developments.” Now it reads: “News, ideas, and commentary about urbanism in the Mile High City.” With the new wording, two differences are evident:
First, the new focus of the blog will be urbanism, the mix of physical, political, economic, geographic, cultural, and other factors that together create the wonderfully messy places we call cities. Infill development is obviously a big part of the urban environment these days, so that aspect of urbanism will continue to get a lot of coverage here at DenverInfill. But now the full spectrum of urbanism will be up for discussion: transit, public spaces, architecture, sustainability, urban policies, and so on. I’ve been heading in that direction anyway in my blog posts over the past year or so; now I’m just making it official.
Part of this also has to do with the limitations of the DenverInfill website. I created it in 2004 sort of on a whim and as a hobby. At that time, I didn’t think much about the issue of keeping it up-to-date over the long haul. Building it was a lot of work, but it was fun and, for the first few years, I was able to keep the website relatively current tracking new projects, updating construction photos, and whatnot, despite the fact that just adding one new project to the website involved a complicated, time-consuming, multi-step process of rasterizing this and cropping that and html-ing this and FTP-ing that. But for the last two years I have been much busier both at work and with the various boards and committees I’m on; consequently, the project-updating aspects of the website have suffered. I’ve generally kept up with things via the blog, but over time the blog and the website have grown farther apart from each other. Anyway, here’s the deal: Given the website’s baseline is the start of 2000 and the end of 2009 is at hand, that makes a nice even decade. Now seems like a good time to stop. The DenverInfill website will remain as a permanent online archive documenting Downtown Denver’s infill boom from 2000-2009, but its project-tracking days are over. New infill developments, however, will continue to be enthusiastically covered on the blog.
Second, in addition to expanding the focus from infill developments to urbanism in general, the blog will expand its geographic coverage. The DenverInfill blog will be no longer tied to the rigid boundaries of the website. Topics relating to urbanism and city-building from throughout the greater Denver region are now fair game, although most of the discussion will probably remain centered on Denver’s urban core, because that is where my heart is.
Yet another change starting in 2010 will be the introduction of new contributors to the DenverInfill blog. I’ll be inviting people with expertise in a variety of areas—architecture, transit, urban design, real estate development, etc.—to join me in posting about Denver’s urbanism. This will increase both the breadth and depth of the discussion and, hopefully, expand DenverInfill’s reach and influence in the community. It should also increase the frequency of posts to the blog, so that when I’m super busy or out of town, you won’t have to go days on end without a new DenverInfill post. Eventually, the DenverInfill blog will transform into Denver’s online magazine for urban planning, design, and development issues, or something to that effect. I’m also collaborating with someone on another blog/website that will be a nice complement to DenverInfill. More about that when the time comes.
Because the old version of this blog was a self-hosted Blogger blog, there were some limitations to the features available to me. With WordPress, I’ll have more flexibility and options regarding blogging tools and other web gizmos. For example, you’ll notice on the right sidebar we now have Categories. Currently, there are over 500 “Uncategorized” blog posts because, with the switch to WordPress, we imported all 580 posts from the previous Blogger format and all of those came over uncategorized. I’ve edited the most recent 20 or so posts to add the appropriate categories and, over the course of the next month or two, I’ll be working my way backwards in time to eventually categorize all 580 posts. The categories reflect broad urbanism topics or geographic areas and should help make the blog more user-friendly. If you’re looking for something more specific, such as a project name or a particular street, please use the “Search” function at the top of the left sidebar.
Finally, let me end with a few thanks. First, to Patricia at Keynote Support for the great job on importing the old posts from Blogger and customizing the new WordPress template. In 2010 we’ll be adding more features and maybe tweaking the design a bit, but I’m very happy with the new look. Also, let me thank all of you out there who visit DenverInfill. I have run into so many of you at various meetings and events around town and I genuinely appreciate all of the compliments you give me on DenverInfill. I never expected DenverInfill to be as popular as it appears to be, which tells me that there are a lot of people out there who love our city and have a strong desire to see it continue to evolve and grow into the best urban center it can be. That is extremely gratifying and makes my effort totally worth it.
I will conclude with what my mission continues to be in this new era for DenverInfill:
- To inspire Denver citizens to envision and strive for exceptional urbanism in their city and region
- To inform and educate on topics relating to urban planning and city-building
- To serve as an online resource of notable urban projects, plans, and programs throughout Denver
- To promote and showcase Denver and its opportunities to the world
- To advocate for positive changes to Denver’s existing and future built environment
And, finally, DenverInfill still loathes surface parking lots and seeks their eradication from Denver’s urban core!
