Formed by the seasonal flow of water over many thousands of years, Denver’s current-day topography disguises a long story of our efforts to move, manipulate, and manhandle the natural, unimpeded flow of water. James and Andy met due to their shared love of Lakewood/Dry Gulch on the Westside. (James is one of the forces behind a weekly trash pickup along the Gulch that’s been running since 2022. They meet every Tuesday at 5:30pm at Wolff and 12th Place to pick up trash for an hour, then hang!) So it’s only fitting that James and Andy sit down to talk about what makes the Gulch such an asset to West Denver, and how, despite its nature as a less-manicured green space, every part of the Gulch’s ecology and function is actually directed by humans.
As Robin Wall Kimmerer notes in the first chapter of her well-loved book, Braiding Sweetgrass, if we grow incapable as people of acknowledging our positive role to play in shaping our natural environment, if we grow so jaded and skeptical of our positive influence on nature, if “[we can] not even imagine what beneficial relations between [our] species and others might look like[,] how can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability?” In this episode of DenverUrbanism, James and Andy try to appreciate the scale of our human interventions in the landscape and how we either aid or inhibit biodiversity in our urban environment, aided by entomologist Dr. Hayley Schroeder.
Editor’s Note. You might be wondering where Episode 6 of DenverUrbanism is? It’s right here: Zeroing in on Regional Traffic Deaths w/ Emily Kleinfelter! This is the first part of a two part series about Vision Zero, with a second part soon to come! We’ll have a blog post with both parts then!
