Some people are obsessed with trains. Others can’t get enough of comic books or Star Wars. Wayne New is what you might call a community planning geek.

The newly elected Denver city council member pulls out his iPhone and starts flipping through photos from his recent visit to Atlanta, depicting what appears to be pavement — but not just any pavement. If you look closely, you can see rails from the Atlanta Streetcar system built into the concrete.

“This is the big issue right here. See all the rails in the street? There’s a car riding on the rail,” says an enthusiastic New. “See, it doesn’t prevent you from using all your lanes of traffic. That’s the big advantage.”

He’s quick to point out that there are disadvantages — for one, streetcars are expensive — but New has more on his mind than the relative merits of streetcars versus buses. At the top of his agenda as he prepares to take office July 20 is the development of a “long-range, strategic planning process” for the fast-growing city.

The goal is to determine “what Denver is to look like in the next 30 years,” he said over coffee at Daz Bog near his home in Cherry Creek North.

“We’ve got all these individual projects or functions going on — Blueprint Denver, land use is getting updated, we’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do with transit, we’ve got the (National) Western Stock Show, we’ve got DIA, we’ve got RTD going out and all the developments — and how is all of this going to fit together so that it makes sense for what our vision should be in 30 years?” New asked.

Putting together such a plan is also “a great opportunity for all of our citizens to work together for the city.”

“You can really energize our city and hopefully address what our needs are and how we’re going to get there and how we’re going to fund it,” he said.

New said he’s already talked about the idea with other city council members, and Mayor Michael Hancock is next on his list.

“We’re just all starting to talk about it. Just talking about ideas,” New said. “I’m going to talk to the mayor about it Monday. His heart’s in the right place. He’ll want to do what’s best for the city. But it takes a big effort to do something like that.”

Then again, “I don’t know of anything that’s worthwhile that doesn’t take work,” he said.

While New has never worked as a city planner, in many ways he’s been preparing his whole life to undertake the task. A native Georgian, he studied industrial management and engineering at Georgia Tech. His career was spent managing children’s hospitals, including stints at Emory University, Stanford University and finally Denver, where he landed 16 years ago in the Cherry Creek area and never left.

He immediately became involved with the Cherry Creek North Neighborhood Association, including a lengthy term as president. One thing his experiences have taught him is that managing a hospital isn’t that different from managing a community, he says.

“I’ve done a lot of community work, but also hospitals are so similar to little cities,” New said. “They’re on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Very labor-oriented. Life and death decisions. You’ve got all the functions of a city, almost.”

That experience “I think it lends itself well,” he said. “And the big common ingredient that attracts me the most is probably service. I loved my job in children’s hospitals because you were helping kids and the welfare of children. And that’s the same mission our city has, taking care of our citizens and growing and prospering and quality of life.”

He rejects the idea that he’s somehow in favor of slow growth.

“I’m not slow-growth whatsoever. Smart development, what I consider it, is not over-development,” New said. “And what I mean by over-development is — well, we’ve got to grow and prosper, and if you’re living in the zoning code, you’re going to grow and develop without any problems.”

He said he foresees Denver moving forward with a construction-defects ordinance as Lakewood has done in the wake of the Legislature’s failure to pass a bill to encourage condominium building by limiting the liability of developers.

“We’ve got like 1,500 apartments under construction and very few condominiums, and that’s because of the construction-defects legislation that didn’t get out again,” he said. “So that’ll been one of the issues we’ll probably address on the city council.”

He supports more condominium development for two main reasons: It provides more affordable housing for younger residents, and it encourages them to invest in the community in a way that renting doesn’t.

“What I’m concerned about are the middle-income young people. We’ve got to have affordable housing for them,” New said. “So if we can get the construction defect [situation] changed and have more affordable housing and build around transportation nodes where they travel on the transit and the bus lines, then it’s a win-win situation. We’ll be able to help build greater condominium construction as well as promote transit in the city.”

The new 13-member city council with its seven new members has yet to meet, but “I think it’s fairly like-minded folks,” he said.

“I think the main thing is, everybody’s interested in doing the right thing for the city,” said New. “And we’ve got to do something to promote home ownership. It’s so important for community development when you have to buy into the community.”

Finally, he stresses, “No one is against development. We need to have a comprehensive look, and it needs to be cumulative.”

“If you have an area like Cherry Creek — we have so much development going on — sometimes the planning department gets focused just on one project,” he said. “And that’s fine, you look at the impact of one project, but you need to also look at the impact of three or four projects, and what’s the cumulative effect of all that development.”

“That’s what I’ll be emphasizing on city council,” New said.

— valrichardson17@gmail.com