[wild wild west]

Re: the Denver-Calgry comparison - my 2 cents is that Denver has a more "well-rounded" donwtown (meanign a broader mix of the kinds of uses one expects in a downtown - sporting facilities, museums and art galleries, educational institutions, historic districts, retail mix, etc.) whereas Calgary's downtown is much more oriented towards business. In spite of the population difference being in Denver's favour, appearances are quite opposite: most of downtown Calgary consists of highrise canyons while downtown Denver has many more low-slung buildings interspersed with its highrises, which certainly does not leave someone the impression they are in the heart of a metro area of ~2.5 million. I didn't find Denver's downtown to be much different in terms of after-hours pedestrian traffic. In spite of Denver's better range of uses, we seem to have more of the basics - much larger downtown workforce, fewer parking lots, the more successful LRT system and of course more and denser downtown residential. That said there are certain elements of downtown Denver I would love to emulate...in particular, LoDo is awesome.