Most people walking Denver’s 16th Street today won’t stop to admire its drainage system or its suspended paving soil cells. They may not notice the careful choreography of trees, transit, and human movement as they stroll the pedestrian-oriented thoroughfare. What they will notice, ideally, is that something about the street just feels better.
This kind of sublime shift reveals itself through human experience. Through our shaping of exterior environments to provide ease of movement, the welcome of a shaded bench, the relief of air that’s a bit cooler on a hot summer day, the city somehow feels both safer and more alive. That’s the real magic of people-first design. It doesn’t shout. It invites.
That feeling is no accident.
In cities around the world, streets are being reimagined not just as ways to get from point A to point B but also as places to gather, linger, and connect. They’re becoming platforms for public life, rather than just infrastructure for vehicles. In essence, cities are turning streets into places where people want to be.
Denver’s 16th Street is a strong example of that shift. This iconic mile-long pedestrian and transit corridor in the heart of the city’s downtown underwent a full transformation to update its aging infrastructure, strengthen its green ecosystems, and re-establish it as somewhere people want to spend time. The result is an ambitious pedestrian infrastructure project that can serve as a blueprint for what great downtown streets might become.
Honoring the legacy while planning for the future
Designed by I.M. Pei & Partners (now Pei Cobb Freed & Partners) with landscape architect Hanna/Olin (now OLIN), the core objective when the project was originally completed, back in the early 1980s, was to reduce traffic congestion, centralize transit, and create a European-style pedestrian promenade that would draw people back to a city center.
With an 80 foot (24 m) wide cross-section that featured a central pedestrian zone flanked by shaded walkways, generous seating, a free shuttle, and now-iconic diamond-pattern granite paving, the 16th Street Mall, as it was then called, helped shepherd significant economic revival and foot traffic in a downtown area.
After four decades of daily use and a pandemic that hit the core of Denver hard, however, the corridor needed more than repair. It needed to be brought in line with today’s values—walkability, environmental resilience, and economic vibrancy—while still honoring the street’s civic legacy.
The city and county of Denver together played a pivotal role in making the recent revitalization possible by championing the vision for a greener, more pedestrian-focused corridor and committing the leadership, resources, and coordination needed to deliver it.
Landscape architecture, planning, and urban design firm Dig Studio worked alongside the city and county of Denver and a large team of design, construction, and technical experts to execute this redesign. We helped it through years of studies, public engagement, modeling, coordination, and implementation.
Setting the table for revitalization
Streets like this one are successful only when they serve the people who walk them. From our first design ideation, the conversation centered on how to make 16th Street feel more generous, more comfortable, more intuitive, more alive. We saw an opportunity to do more than restore a downtown corridor. We could reset the table for daily life.
Detailed public life studies, environmental assessments, and historic preservation reviews served as our guides. Our goal was to honor the integrity of the original design while creating an inviting, resilient, and safe space for everyday use and future generations.
At the same time, the design had to recognize the reality that cities thrive on what we can’t always see: the pipes, the roots, the systems that quietly keep everything going. That’s where so much of this project’s innovation lives: out of sight, but still essential.
Several priorities emerged to anchor the design:
- Make the space more comfortable and inviting for pedestrians to sit and linger
- Build green infrastructure systems that would improve the corridor’s performance over time
- Enhance visibility and safety without compromising the character of the street
Those goals shaped every decision that followed, from the drainage system beneath the pavers to the play elements atop them.
What’s happening below the surface
One of the most transformative moves we made is invisible to the average person walking the street. The project includes the country’s largest installation of suspended paving systems for trees, which uses Citygreen’s Stratavault soil cell technology.
These soil structure cells give the 220 mature trees—across 10 species that were contract-grown for this project—the space and support they need to grow strong, healthy roots, which leads to bigger, longer-living canopies that shade the street and clean the air.
Denver’s urban canopy has historically lagged behind ones in peer cities. This project helps shift that trajectory. The early signs of growth are promising, and the long-term return is clear: healthier trees, better shade, cooler temperatures, and more resilient urban ecosystems.
To support this system, and to ensure the street is easier to maintain and upgrade in the future, the project team’s civil engineering firm, Martin/Martin, built a full 3-D model of the entire corridor.
Lidar imaging helped the firm map every underground utility and structural element, so that everything could be planned with precision. This digital model is now part of the city’s long-term record, and it promises to save time and money for maintenance and future upgrades.
Managing water with green infrastructure
Just as we reimagined what lies beneath the street to support tree health, we also looked at stormwater as a component to add value in other ways. On 16th Street, the water quality features were the first of their kind to be implemented in Denver. They adapt the city’s green streetside stormwater planters guidance to fit a dense, highly constrained urban corridor.
Amid adjacent building basements, dense underground utilities, and a lack of room for full volumetric systems, we took a different approach. We set planters a few inches below sidewalk grade and fitted them with curb cuts so that small amounts of runoff could filter through vegetation before entering the storm system. Doing so reduced directly connected impervious areas and introduced pockets of cooling green along the corridor.
We placed most planters at curb bump-outs, which shortened crossing distances for pedestrians, improved safety, and helped reduce the heat island effect. Narrative walls integrated into the design subtly remind passersby that these systems connect directly to local waterways, thus creating an educational layer that raises awareness without disrupting the experience of the street.
The result is a water quality enhancement program that works within ultra-urban constraints—a design solution that protects public space while making it more enjoyable to use.
A better street-level experience
All the careful engineering and environmental benefit in the world means little if the street doesn’t feel good to walk. Every surface detail was designed to spark a sense of ease, invitation, and even delight. We thought about such things as shoulder space and sightlines, the comfort of shade, and the way people naturally gather.
We widened the walkways on most blocks by 10 feet (3 m) to give more space for people to move and for outdoor cafes and seating areas. The original granite pavers were replaced for better safety and durability performance, even as the original paving pattern was retained, thus honoring the 1982 design inspired by Navajo textile patterns. We added new seating zones and social “gathering rooms” along the mile to create simple, everyday places for eating, pausing, and people-watching.
We also brought in interactive features to encourage moments of joy. These small surprises matter: a place to lean with your coffee, an unexpected sculpture to climb, a quiet corner that feels like your own. The corridor now includes sculptural seating, climbable elements, art installations, and touchscreen kiosks with real-time wayfinding and downtown updates. All these little cues say, stay awhile.
Additions include outdoor dining areas we call “feast rooms,” shaded lounge spots, and gathering zones with interactive features that bring a playful energy to the street, making it feel more open and welcoming, not just to pedestrians, but also to families, visitors, and anyone looking for a place to pause.
Whether you’re commuting to work, visiting from out of town, or simply looking for a place to sit and breathe, these elements break up the linear rhythm of the street and offer reasons to slow down, stay longer, and return again.
Measuring the impact
Ultimately, public investment must deliver for a city. Denver’s $172 million bet on 16th Street is already showing results.
According to the Downtown Denver Partnership, activity on 16th Street has risen sharply since much of the corridor reopened. From January through late July 2025, average daily visits were up 13 percent compared to the same period in 2024—an increase of roughly 600 more visits each day, or 120,000 more visits year-to-date. Unique visits also climbed 10 percent, adding 70,000 new individual visitors. June 2025 brought an even bigger surge, with daily activity up 24 percent over the previous year, translating to 1,400 more visits each day and 41,000 more visits that month alone.
Restaurants along 16th Street already account for 20 percent of downtown Denver’s restaurant tax base, a share that is likely to grow as more businesses open and more visitors return.
Beyond the economic data, the change is reflected in how people feel about being downtown. According to a Downtown Denver Partnership survey, visitors report better experiences, stronger perceptions of safety, and more reasons to come back.
These perceptions matter more than you might think. Many cities are still navigating the long tail of downtown recovery. If public spaces don’t feel safe, comfortable, and engaging, people won’t come back. That’s especially true in such places as Denver, where office use is declining and activity must come from elsewhere.
Alongside these economic outcomes, the project is also helping the city better understand the environmental performance of its downtown streets. As monitoring continues, we expect to learn more about how urban tree canopies, permeable surfaces, and heat reduction strategies influence air quality and other key indicators.
Planning for what comes next
From the outset, we knew that physical design alone wouldn’t guarantee long-term success. For 16th Street to succeed, it must be active, cared for, and used in ways that support public life over time.
That’s why we baked flexibility into the design from the start, making the corridor capable of supporting everything from daily lunch-hour foot traffic to major events that shut down the full length of the corridor. Infrastructure such as lighting, power, and staging was coordinated to support festivals, markets, and street closures without needing big investments down the line.
In the coming months and years, activation will play a central role in sustaining 16th Street’s momentum. Already, through the Downtown Denver Partnership, the street is hosting live music, seasonal pop-ups, and cultural programming that give visitors more reasons to return.
Design can set the stage, but it’s up to operators, programmers, and business owners to help keep it vibrant.
A blueprint for people-first design
Lessons from 16th Street are applicable far beyond the Mile High City. Cities nationwide seek to update their downtown streets and public spaces in ways that make them greener, more flexible, and better aligned with how people use cities today.
We’ve seen the impact of traffic reduction and pedestrian-first design in cities such as Paris, where car-free streets have improved air quality and quality of life.
These lessons apply everywhere. If we want our cities to thrive, we must stop thinking about streets as mere infrastructure and instead think about them as places where people live their lives.
16th Street shows that this kind of transformation is possible, and that, when done right, it can become a defining feature of a city’s future.
If there’s a lone takeaway for other cities, it’s this one: The true measure of a great street is not just how it moves us, but how it brings us together.
This project was made possible through the collaboration of many partners, past and present, including PCL Construction, Martin/Martin, Clanton, Jacobs, Stantec, OLIN, AtkinsRéalis, the Downtown Denver Partnership, and the city and county of Denver.
