Cities
Nestled in a valley at the base of the Rocky Mountains, Boulder, Colorado, looks more like a national park than a city. Its compact, low-slung buildings follow trails and a walkable downtown from greenery to greenbelt, where its undeveloped plains evoke the Old West. Farther out still are the Ls—sprawling suburbs like Lafayette, Louisville, and Longmont—but in Boulder’s center, they feel a world away. The hip coffee shops and breweries along downtown’s Pearl Street are practically clichéd now, but Boulder’s dichotomies—aging strip malls beside thriving offices for Google and Twitter, hiking stores blending into the Italianate campus of the University of Colorado–Boulder—are striking.