Mike Johnston, a onetime high school English teacher, became the 46th mayor of Denver in 2023. He took the helm during a period of significant growth in one of the Intermountain West’s most prominent cities, and has been managing the growing pains that come along with that popularity—including high housing costs, homelessness, and municipal budget woes.

The road to the mayor’s office included teaching English in the Mississippi Delta, leading three different schools in the Denver Metro area as principal, and serving two terms in the Colorado State Senate. The Colorado native was also a senior education advisor to President Obama and CEO of Gary Community Ventures, a local philanthropic organization with a focus on education and housing.

Johnston, 50, was part of the Lincoln Institute’s mayors panel at the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference in Denver in spring 2025, along with Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett and Fort Collins Mayor Jeni Arndt. Senior Fellow Anthony Flint caught up with him several weeks later for this interview; their full conversation is available as a Land Matters podcast.

Anthony Flint: Like a lot of booming metropolitan regions, Denver is facing a housing affordability problem. What are the key elements for addressing this crisis?

Mike Johnston: We have folks from all over the country and all over the world who want to move to Denver. And that is a great problem to have. I have friends who are mayors in cities facing very different challenges, with declining populations and lots of vacant buildings. Denver is now, I think, the number two destination for people under age 30 in the United States. That’s driving a lot of economic growth. It also drives lots of housing demand.

We have to add a lot more housing supply, and we think there are three ways to do that. One is to make it faster to build housing. That means an aggressive strategy to make our permitting process take 180 days instead of two to three years. The second is reducing the costs of building. We’re doing more to provide tax abatements and tax programs. We launched a middle-class housing strategy [that provides] property tax abatements for up to 10 years in exchange for a 30-year commitment on deed-restricted affordability for middle-class Denverites. And then, of course, we are investing more in affordable housing. We know the city can’t solve this alone, and the market can’t solve it alone. We have to be aggressive about bringing on a lot more housing, a lot more quickly and a lot more affordably.

AF: Your campaign to address homeless encampments in Denver triggered a bit of backlash, including some criticism of the expense. Can you explain your approach, and how it might apply to other cities? And is there anything you would do differently?

MJ: When cities have high housing costs, more people can’t afford to pay. That is just a mathematical fact. That means many of the cities that are growing and in high demand, like Denver, San Francisco,  Austin, or Seattle, are the places where we see this struggle. But this problem can be solved by addressing core needs. We set an ambitious goal to try to end street homelessness in my first term. Four years. That seems impossible. Well, we’re two years in now, and we have reduced our street homelessness in Denver by 45 percent. That is … the largest reduction of street homelessness in any city in American history over two years, and we’re very proud. But it’s also a clear sign that we’re halfway through the term and [only] halfway to our goal. We think other cities should be ambitious. And believing that this is a solvable problem, let me talk about the way we’ve done this, which we think is also scalable.

First, we’ve focused on bringing on transitional housing units, which are dignified, individual private units. A lot of these are hotels we’ve bought and converted. They’re tiny home villages that we’ve built. It’s not like a shelter, [where you’re] sleeping on a gym floor with 100 people on a mat. It is a place where you have a locked door, privacy, and access to showers and bathrooms and kitchens. You can store your stuff when you go to work for the day.

And we brought on wraparound services on each of these sites, like mental health support, workforce training, and long-term housing navigation. And once we brought those units on, we went to the encampments in Denver, and instead of sweeping those encampments from block to block, which causes them to just show up in front of someone else’s house or church or hospital, we would actually  move all 50 people or 100 people into housing, then keep that block or region of the city permanently closed to future camping. Two years in, we’ve now closed every encampment in the city. We haven’t had a single tent in our downtown business district for more than a year and a half, and we have cut family homelessness by 83 percent. We’ve become the largest city ever to end street homelessness for veterans. We think it can work for other cities, and we’ll share these lessons with anyone who’s willing to take them on, because we think we should set the expectation in every American city that street homelessness can be a solvable problem.

AF: Turning to transportation: Are you satisfied with the number of people using the light rail network in Denver Metro, and the number of people living in transit-oriented development? Any lessons learned from the relatively light ridership on the free bus on the 16th Street Transit Mall, which is finally concluding its renovation after long delays?

MJ: We’re not satisfied yet, because transit and housing have to be connected strategies. Housing is a transit strategy. So we had this great transit network built. We did not have density of housing around any of those spots. Now we’re undertaking a series of large catalytic investments on our light rail lines so we can build thousands of units of housing along that corridor. We just acquired the largest piece of private property in city history to turn into a 155-acre public park. It is right next to a light rail stop, so we can now add housing density all around that site—beautiful location, and people can get on the light rail and get right to downtown or to a Broncos game or anything else.

We’re building a new women’s soccer stadium also, at a transit-oriented development site … we’re rebuilding in a historically Latino part of North Denver, and that’ll allow us to add about 60 acres of new housing, public spaces, and commercial activation, also all on public transit. So our belief is, you have to actually be deliberate about building real density around your public transit, as much as you want to build your public transit around well-traveled lines of travel.

Part of that is our downtown strategy. You mentioned our 16th Street bus, [which is] free downtown. We’re making the largest investment in our downtown of any city in the country, per capita …. We’re going to add about 4,000 units of housing in our city center, using funds from our downtown Denver authority, because we know that means more people will use that bus every day to get to and from work or to go to see friends. We’re working on filling about 7 million square feet of vacant office space [with residential conversions and recruiting businesses to come downtown] …. We want to make it easy to get downtown and around downtown.

AF: Given the current municipal fiscal challenges, what is your thinking about alternative financing systems such as a land value tax or value capture, as seen in the 38th and Blake Incentive Overlay?

MJ: We are interested in every incentive we can find to encourage folks to build more housing. The 38th and Blake Incentive Overlay was really kind of a density bonus, where we allow folks to build higher buildings than what the zoning might allow in exchange for adding more affordable housing. And we are always looking at ways to incentivize folks to add more affordable housing, as I mentioned with our property tax abatement.

We’re also looking at partnership on public land. We’re looking at working with city-owned land, working with Denver public schools that have land, and our regional transit system, if they have land. We’re always looking to contribute public land to incentivize more affordability. We want to do all of the above strategies, but wherever we can add more housing without investing more dollars—that’s a big help.

AF: How would you assess the progress of your climate action plans? Do you see a tangible embrace at the local level for addressing climate change, especially in the context of federal retrenchment?

MJ: We don’t see any change in our city’s commitment to climate action or our conviction that this is an existentially important effort. We’re committed to an aggressive vision to meet our climate goals, which for us is a plan to be entirely carbon free by 2040, to have 100 percent renewable energy. And to make sure we’re driving economic growth. We want to do both.

AF: Can local and state government take over this planet-wide issue and really be effective?

MJ: We don’t believe we should give up here or step away. We’re doing a whole public campaign on behavior change …. We want to encourage people to take more local action now, in the face of federal abandonment of this …. We’re building out charging station infrastructure to make it easier for us to convert our fleet to electric and to get more Ubers and Lyfts and FedExes and Amazons to do the same, and to convince regular residents do the same. We’ll keep building the infrastructure to do this. We’ll keep incentivizing people to do it. We’ll keep changing behavior to do it, and we’ll keep setting our own targets for how our vehicles, our businesses, and our residents try to hit aggressive climate goals—knowing that we’re still all in this together, even if the president doesn’t want to make it a priority.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Lead image: Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. Credit: Denver Mayor’s Office.

Think of digital signage in an urban streetscape, and you probably picture something like Times Square or Las Vegas. The unique attractions of those places notwithstanding, few municipalities are looking to replicate that aesthetic. In most urban downtowns, big, bright signs with moving images have faced very tight restrictions, if not outright banishment.

But a different response has started to emerge over the years, and especially recently, in cities from Denver to Atlanta, San Antonio to San Jose. The evolution of digital signage technology, combined with some adventurous thinking and experimentation, has led to the development of “media districts” designed to breathe life into existing neighborhoods in urban downtowns and beyond.

Denver has been a notable pioneer. Two decades ago there was, by legislative design, no digital signage downtown. As an advertising medium, such signs were seen as little more than extra-garish billboards, benefitting only their outdoor-media company owners and private landlords. But at the same time, the city was trying to figure out how to bring more activity—and actual light—to downtown streets around its performing arts complex and convention center, an area that tended toward unwelcoming darkness after nightfall. It was tough for restaurants and other businesses to draw customers, and the area lacked “a sense of place,” says David Ehrlich, who is now the executive director of the Denver Theatre District, and back then was a consultant with sports and entertainment businesses on venue projects.

Asked to work with the city on ideas for enlivening the district, Ehrlich was inspired by an old photograph of the same area in the late 19^th century, lit up by then-newfangled light bulbs and dubbed “the brightest street in America” by Thomas Edison. “Literally in the picture you could see a bunch of people on the street,” Ehrlich says. “I thought, you know, let’s do a back-to-the-future thing. Let’s take modern media to serve that purpose of creating a sense of place, a sense of safety.”

Today there are 17 digital signs of varying size installed in a 16-square-block area (along with 29 static, non-digital billboard-style signs that have gone up since the city implemented new regulations). Participating media companies that own the signs distribute 15 percent of their revenue — which generally works out to more than $1 million a year — to the nonprofit, nongovernmental Denver Theatre District, which funds various events and arts projects in the area. Some of these projects take place on the signs themselves: the companies are also required to turn over 20 percent of the screens’ time to the DTD for arts and cultural organizations, which can either promote their events or present their own programming. DTD also produces events and attractions like Night Lights Denver,  an ongoing outdoor art installation involving light projection on certain buildings in the district; a “15-second video festival,” presenting short films made by artists on downtown LED screens; and other digital work by local, national, and international artists.

Officials in Denver created a DTD sign plan as a supplementary document to the city code, originally involving a potential for 10 signs that were strictly banned elsewhere downtown. The plan put in place some general design parameters, explains Matthew Bossler, a senior city planner for Denver. These include, for example, a limitation on the luminosity of 25 lumens, and a specification that signs be located above the ground floor]. “There’s a kind of flexibility granted in exchange for higher design standards,” Bossler adds. “It also describes where on each building facade different types of signs can occur and some additional requirements such as how to avoid residential impacts.”

Given the initial permit application process (and the aftermath of the financial crisis), the first few signs went up gradually, over a period of four or five years. The technology underpinning digital signage, which had already evolved toward LED lighting, continues to improve. “You’re looking at a technology that has changed substantially in the last 15 years,” says James Carpentier, director of state and local government affairs for the International Sign Association (ISA), a trade organization. In addition to allowing for adjustable brightness and automatic dimming, it’s now much easier to configure “hold time,” to address concerns about quickly rotating ad messages potentially distracting drivers. (A typical digital sign, or “electronic message center” in most cities is 100 square feet, compared to an average of 7,000 square feet in Las Vegas, according to the ISA.)

On a more aesthetic level, modern LED signs offer much higher resolution and better color, can automatically adjust to changing light conditions, and consume less power than earlier technologies. Modular LED panels allow for varied design options, including curved screens – like the 25-by-60-foot sign-and-screen cluster at the intersection of 14th and Champa streets on the parking garage of the Colorado Convention Center. And they’re easier to coordinate, so that programming can run in sync on multiple screens.

Ehrlich now works with other cities, including Atlanta and San Antonio, through the Urban Activation Institute. While specific implementations vary, the basic blueprint is similar: Media companies get leeway to deploy signs under certain conditions, providing a steady revenue stream for local arts or other initiatives. Previously undervalued areas get a boost, ideally helping restaurants and other businesses. Proponents also say the additional light can help promote public safety. And local government spends nothing.

Opponents counter that the signs are too bright, potentially unsafe, or compromise the authenticity and character of cityscapes. “Imagine a digital advertising dystopia,” wrote one electronic signage foe in response to San Jose’s consideration of trying its own version of Denver’s experiment. Others contend that the tie-in to arts funding is a slick trick by advertisers to gain the support of resource-strapped policy makers. Planners, meanwhile, have had to consider how to regulate the technology, developing guidelines based on size, location, and other factors.

Even in Denver, the district is a work in progress, but one that seems to have at least some fans.  Bossler, the planner, is currently managing two rezoning cases involving properties that are immediately adjacent to the DTD, whose owners are seeking to be rezoned in order to get into the district, specifically aiming for approval for large-format sign installations.

“The theater district is one that we can generally describe as being a unique sub area within downtown that draws many visitors,” Bossler says. “And the special allowances for signs can contribute to that. The electronic billboards that are allowed in the district bring light, color, and dynamism to some of the most frequented areas of downtown, particularly those that are connected to our major theaters. This creates kind of a special ambiance and liveliness in the streets and public places within the district.” It encourages walking and presents a vibrant image, he adds, drawing more people to the district’s businesses—and that kind of economic impact is a positive sign.

Rob Walker is the author of City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape and The Art of Noticing. More of his writing can be found at robwalker.substack.com.

Lead image: A moment from the Supernova digital animation festival organized by Denver Digerati, visible on a digital billboard at 14th and Champa streets in downtown Denver. Credit: Denver Digerati.