Ordinary city, doesn't live up to the hype...
-
7/30/2018
I lived in Denver from 2006-2012 and found it to be a pretty average city with some distinct pluses and minuses.
Pluses:
-It's a young city full of the kind of positive energy that young people bring to a community
-It has some great older city neighborhoods full of character
-It has a very large airport that makes it relatively cheap to fly almost anywhere in the US
-Politically, Colorado is a pretty mixed state, so you'll be able to find some like-minded folks and you'll also run into folks on the other side who can help you avoid remaining inside a political bubble
-There are tons of jobs as companies flee to CO in search of tax credits, cheap labor and (relatively) less expensive housing for their employees
-If you like winter sports, the mountains await you
Minuses:
-The winters SUCK. The cold is not as severe or as prolonged as Minnesota or North Dakota, but you'd better be ready for days where the HIGH temperature is below 0f and lows can easily dip into the high teens to low twenties below zero. Snow can occasionally come in huge storms that dump several feet on the metro area. Yes, it often melts more quickly than in the upper midwest, but that also means it freezes over and creates nasty, icy chunks that thrash your car's suspension. Winter is also very long here. From October until mid-May everything is brown and dead: tress, grass, bushes. Ugly landscape for 8 months of the year. Don't listen to the hype when Coloradans tell you their climate is just like Southern California, that's a lie. If that were true, Denver would have palm trees everywhere, would never see snow, and the trees/flowers would be in bloom all year round. Not the case.
-If you like winter sports, be prepared to sit in traffic for 7 hours to go 100 miles into the mountains. Be prepared to fight with thousands of others for parking and pay through the nose for your excursion.
-Infrastructure has not kept up with growth. Transit is lacking, so Denver is really a car-oriented city. Add to that the sprawl, which has crept ever further away from the city of Denver into the hinterlands. Traffic approaches the worst levels in other cities like Seattle, Atlanta, or even parts of Los Angeles. And you may be stuck in inclement weather, either really hot in July or bitterly cold in January.
-Housing costs have shot through the roof. Coloradans are notorious for their NIMBY (not in my back yard) attitude and the supply of housing hasn't kept anywhere near the demand, causing rents and home prices to skyrocket. Wages have not kept up with the growth in housing costs, so be prepared to spend a lot more of your income on housing, just like in California.
-The culture of Denver is good, but not to the level of truly international cities like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles or Chicago. It still feels like a bit of a cowboy town, or a hipster town depending on your crowd. The residents there are pretty salty about not being a first-rate city too, so don't mention those places in a positive light or you will get a lot of butthurt from die-hard Coloradans.
-People from Denver seem to suffer from both as superiority complex AND an inferiority complex. On one hand, they are super defensive and react quite badly when compared to bigger, more cosmopolitan cities. On the other hand, they NEVER shut up about how their city is so much more awesome than any other city in the world. If you aren't a full-blown Denver-is-great kool-aid drinker, this will seriously get on your nerves.
Matt | Houston, TX