Is downtown Denver ready for its SoHo moment? Richard Florida hopes so

In the last five years, Denver has turned from a national success story to a punching bag. A city that was booming in the 2010s has seen its population growth slow and a drumbeat of unfriendly headlines. This year, The Wall Street Journal declared it “America’s Emptiest Downtown.” Meanwhile, Realtor.com gave us the “dubious distinction as the weakest housing market in the nation.” We have the slowest “return-to-office” rate in the country. Our tallest building is in receivership. Parts of the city center are “old, tired and empty.” But those stories are missing the big picture, according to Richard Florida, one of the nation’s leading voices on urbanism and the author of a new report on downtown Denver. “I thought Denver was unreasonably impugned by the national media around downtown,” he said in an interview on Thursday. Who is Richard Florida, and what s he been up to in Denver? Richard Florida Florida dominated thinking about cities in the 2000s