By 2020, much of the open space will have been gobbled up. If you live along the Wasatch Front in an undeveloped area - Herriman, say, or Hooper - and you want to continue your rural lifestyle in the future, here's a piece of friendly advice:
Get out.Move to Grouse Creek or Caineville or Big Water or Newcastle - anywhere that isn't within hailing distance of any of the Wasatch Front's three metropolitan centers - Salt Lake City, Ogden and Provo. Because sure as you're sitting there, those open fields you're looking at through your front window are going to become nice, neat little subdivisions in the next few decades.
Consider this:
All of the east-side open space and much of the west-side open space along the Wasatch Front will have been gobbled up by urban sprawl by 2020. By 2050 the rest of the west-side open space will be gone, and the entire Wasatch Front from Willard to Payson will be citified.
That's according to a report from Quality Growth Efficiency Tools Technical Committee. QGET is a publicly funded study and modeling group that reports to the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget. QGET's efforts are closely aligned with Envision Utah, a consortium of private and public entities charged with projecting Utah's future.
Westward expansion in the Salt Lake Valley will have been stopped by the Oquirrh Mountains, in Ogden by the Great Salt Lake and in Provo by Utah Lake. By that time, current relatively remote outposts such as Brigham City and Nephi and Heber City will have experienced substantial growth from the leftovers - people who haven't been able or haven't wanted to squeeze into the central areas.
Given that future, what kind of urban environment will the Wasatch Front be? Will it emulate vertical New York, or horizontal Los Angeles, or Houston, which, having no zoning laws, is a little of both - commercial buildings and residences mashed together in a wild and woolly hodgepodge?
None of the above, says Salt Lake Planning Director William Wright.
"It's not good to compare us to another city," he said. "We are what we are."
But what, exactly, are we? And what will we become?
Here's an example of what we're doing now, the sort of thing that planners say they want to avoid in the future:
Jackie Regehr's husband grew up on a large lot in a small town, and she grew up on a farm. They both got used to wide open spaces, so moving to suburban Sandy took some getting used to. He commutes to work in downtown Salt Lake City.
Theirs is a nice house, but every direction the Regehrs look - north, south, east, west - the dominant feature is rooftops - big houses, one after the other, with nothing to break the monotony.
"We don't like all the houses," she said. "I would like to see a park in the subdivision. What sold us on it was the lot was a little bit bigger - our kids like to play soccer and stuff, and we just needed a place for them to play."
If planners have their way, future developments won't look like the Regehrs' neighborhood - block after block of stereotypical suburban houses. "Mixed use," "open space" and "cluster development" - concepts meant to break up and vary and open things up - are becoming buzzwords.
"We're trying to put more open space and amenities into neighborhoods instead of just cookie-cutter houses," said West Jordan City Planner Brian Maxfield. "We try to preserve even agricultural uses by clustering."
"Clustering" is an idea whereby a number of houses are placed on small lots close together, with open space between the clusters. The open spaces could be just about anything: a park, a picnic area, a pavilion, a ball field, even a small farm.
The concept has been used for some time in planned unit developments, but the idea is relatively new with detached single-family homes, and no one really knows whether Utah residents will embrace it. City officials acknowledge that Utahns tend to cling to having their very own yard for the dog to run around in and the kids to play in - their piece of the American dream.
"Most people are not used to it," said North Salt Lake Mayor Clare Jones. "They get used to these almost tract subdivisions, with evenly spaced lots and streets."
"You talk to the residents, and they all say, `Big houses, big lots,' " said Draper planner Blaine Murray.
"Residents all really want a house and especially a yard," echoed South Jordan planner Judy Hansen.
According to them, clustering is clearly going to be a tough sell.
In their master plan, however, Jones and his council anticipate cluster housing for the open area south of Eaglewood Golf Course. West Jordan has done the same for the area west of current development. Since people like open space, goes the thinking, they will like clustering. But Eaglewood Development managing partner Steve Smoot, who is looking to develop the North Salt Lake area, isn't so sure.
"I'm not totally sold that it's really the best route to go for residents here in Utah," he said. "We find that a lot of residents of Utah want a big enough lot where they can have a garden, a dog run, room for a trampoline - we're very family oriented."
Some common middle ground
But there is some middle ground. Most planners say the solution is a mixture: some cluster development, some single-family detached residences, some apartments. Not only will this break up the monotonous suburban landscape, city officials say it will help prevent concentrated areas of lower-income residents, which tend to attract more crime and other urban problems.
Past trends appear to bear out mixed-use housing as the answer. Salt Lake City hit its peak population, 193,000, in 1960. Then baby boomers began growing up and moving away to the suburbs, leaving many Salt Lake homes with just one or two people living in them - empty nests. The city hit a low population of 163,000 in 1980; since then population has risen to 175,000 as people started to move back. Some of those have been young, single professionals or students, but others have been families who are tired of increasingly long commutes from the nether regions and who have bought up homes as the older generation has moved into smaller quarters.
"There's kind of an evolution to the periods and seasons of life," said Stuart Reid, Salt Lake director of Community and Economic Development. "A city has to be a living, breathing organism, ready to adjust to changes. Mixed use is kind of the new approach."
The Salt Lake City Council had that in mind when it recently rejected a new housing plan that anticipated 21,000 typical suburban detached dwellings on the as-yet-to-be-developed land west of Salt Lake International Airport. Council members said they want apartments mixed with single-family homes, low income mixed with high and middle incomes, subsidized housing mixed with non-subsidized housing.
"We don't need suburban development in Salt Lake City," said council Chairwoman Deeda Seed. "That's going entirely in the wrong direction. . . . Even suburbs are thinking about what it means to be a suburb."
Much of the new development in Salt Lake City, such as in the Gateway area, is anticipated to be short apartment buildings - three to five stories - a midpoint between the extremes of detached homes and tall apartment buildings. "Laying the towers down on their sides," as Wright put it.
Many people - especially those affected by new developments - accuse city planners of having a mentality of build, build, build - let's just build until there isn't any room left, and we'll worry about open space and quality of life then.
But by then, the dissidents say, it will be too late.
A mixed approach
Wasatch Front cities and planners indeed have been accommodating to developers. But that appears to be changing. Planners are under tremendous pressure from developers trying to make a profit on increasingly scarce land along the Wasatch Front, and they're having to make - and enforce - some tough choices to maintain a good quality of life.
Here are some ways they're doing it. While a city can't prohibit development outright, it can impose restrictions. In West Jordan, city officials are giving some developers a choice: Cluster your housing and get higher overall densities, raising profits, or don't cluster and get lower overall densities, lowering profits.
"The one thing the city's got that it can trade is density," Maxfield said.
For many cities in the Salt Lake Valley the issue is moot, since they are basically out of space. South Salt Lake, Murray, Sandy, Midvale - they have made their choices regarding their urban environment, and now they have to live with them. What you see there now, planners say, is generally what you're going to see in the future.
"We're pretty much built out right now," said a Sandy planner.
For other cities, especially west-side cities like West Jordan, the future is still wide open, and for some, the future will be, well, pretty much like the present.
"We don't have anything that addresses clustering or mixed-use housing or anything like that," South Jordan planner Hansen said. "It's just basic suburban design - one-third-, half-acre lots."
The city does have a zone wherein clustering and mixed use are conditional uses.
Draper, on the other hand, is struggling mightily to come up with a vision of the future. The city's Planning Commission is right now working on a comprehensive reworking of the planning and zoning ordinance to include more public open space, clustered housing and similar concepts.
"They're really wrestling with it," said planner Murray. "It's something drastically different," meaning, of course, a departure from large-lot single-family homes.
While the growth technical committee predicts the total urbanization of the Wasatch Front (1,000 people or jobs per square mile) in coming decades, some areas will always be more urban than others. Draper will get more people within its borders, but it will always be Draper, with primarily single-family homes. Right now the maximum housing density there is 15 units per acre, and that's unlikely to increase much in the future.
"I describe to them our 150 units per acre, and they can hardly believe it," Wright said.
An urban paradox
It is a long-recognized and paradoxical urban phenomenon that the closer people live physically, the more distant they become emotionally.
"Oh, definitely," said Sarah Nelson, who lived in New York City for a few years with her husband, Mark. "I think it's because people feel like they need their space, so they don't make eye contact and don't say hello."
The Nelsons are gregarious people who make friends more easily than most, and they did succeed in making friends in Manhattan. Most were from their church or work. It took a while longer to get to know their neighbors. But, Sarah Nelson said, the effort was worth it.
"People are very friendly once you initiate things - make friends with them," she said.
As more people pack into the Wasatch Front, government officials talk about helping that friendliness along, bucking people's tendency to distance themselves, creating more cohesive neighborhoods.
"People are yearning for that - where they can go and have a cup of coffee or a Coke and wave at friends going by," said Ted Wilson, director of the Salt Lake Futures Commission. "It's a re-establishment of community - looking for ways to bring people back together and using the structure of the city to do that."
But it's not as easy as it appears - such a vision requires people to break long-standing habits, a notoriously difficult undertaking. For example, one of the primary ways the Futures Commission plans to increase cohesiveness is to make neighborhoods more pedestrian-friendly - this in a state where people are practically wedded to their cars. The commission plans traffic-calming devices such as islands, plants and bike paths and forward to light rail and increased Utah Transit Authority busing.
All of those things cost money, and there's no guarantee that they will reverse long-standing habit immediately, but advocates say they're content with gradual change. Salt Lake City has been making physical changes little by little as the money becomes available, and that practice is likely to continue.
The real stickler comes in the suburbs, which haven't thought as much about small, insular neighborhoods as Salt Lake City has. But the idea is gradually trickling down to more suburban communities.
"If you want a real neighborhood, as much as possible it has to be walkable," said West Jordan planner Maxfield.
Another way to bring neighborhoods together is by bringing businesses in to anchor them. Wilson uses the 900 South-900 East area of Salt Lake City as the prime example, with the Tower Theatre and its neighboring shops serving as a gathering place. Neighborhood businesses make it less likely that a resident will drive downtown or to some other commercial center to shop or run errands.
"The ideal neighborhood should have shopping and recreational opportunities within easy access of residents," the Futures Commission report states. ". . . Neighborhoods should offer opportunities for residents to worship at their church of choice, access adequate medical and dental services and partake in community activities that foster a sense of place and belonging."
"There was a time in the '70s and '80s when we were giving up on mom-and-pop stores," Wright said. "We're taking another look at that."
Those types of neighborhood anchor businesses may be accepted in areas that are already highly urbanized, but in new, more suburban subdivisions, residents are almost always stubbornly opposed to any commercial development. They want to be surrounded by homes only.
Earlier this year a huge fight erupted over a proposed health club and small accompanying professional office and retail center in North Salt Lake's Eaglewood area, which residents finally succeeded in killing.
"I would have had no objection to that personally," said North Salt Lake Mayor Jones. "I don't know why you need to drive five miles to buy a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk. But they didn't want it."
Thus the quandary of planners: They have great plans for great neighborhoods and great cities, but if residents rise up en masse against them, some are simply not going to go through, and planners say future urban environments will be the poorer for it.
A room with a view
Salt Lake resident Allen Inskeep has a room with a view. His apartment east of Foothill Drive features a window overlooking trees and homes and valley.
And that, he says, makes the place. Being cooped up in a basement apartment with nothing green outside the window would be awful.
"It makes everything better," he says. "It makes it worth living there. . . . I can't imagine not having" greenery around.
No matter how much people grow accustomed to urban living, no one seems capable of getting away from his desire to see nature - trees, grass, shrubs - amid the asphalt and concrete. The more crowded the Wasatch Front gets, the more the issue of green space is brought up.
Earlier this century there was a movement to "modernize" - pave cities with concrete, memorialize man's presence with steel and glass. That is changing. Future Wasatch Front cities will have a significantly different look, with more greenery.
Take the tendency to pipe the rivers flowing into cities. Now there's an effort to exhume those rivers and creeks, bringing babbling brooks into people's back yards. Witness the recently created City Creek and Brigham Young Historic parks in which City Creek was brought above ground.
Parks, trees in traffic medians, grass on park strips - all are being focused on as Wasatch Front cities attempt to temper the expanding urban environment.
Approaches vary widely; some city officials opt for a few large parks; others prefer more, smaller parks; still others, fewer smaller parks. Murray has 422 acres of open space for its 35,000 residents, while South Salt Lake has only five acres for 11,000 residents. American Fork City Councilman John McKinney said he would like to be able to draw circles on a city map that hit a park of no smaller than three acres within every half-mile radius. Pleasant Grove Mayor Lloyd Ash, in contrast, prefers fewer parks but each of them in the eight- to 10-acre range.
Municipal green space is a challenge for planners because no two residents are alike in their preferences. "You have to anticipate future demand, and that's an even bigger trick," said Jonathon Howard of the Virginia-based National Recreation and Parks Association.
Thus, what happens in the future regarding green space allocation depends mightily on which city you examine. Some places will have a small patch of greenery very near your door. Others will have ball diamonds and vast lawns, but you'll have to get in your car to get to them.
But no matter how much green space planners allocate as the Wasatch Front grows, the area has one great advantage over other metropolitan districts.
"We have great big open spaces already," Wright said. "We have thousands of acres of open space."
With a sweeping gesture, he indicates the snow-capped Wasatch Mountain range.
Water to make it blossom
"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose." - Isaiah 35:1
Utah is a desert state, but you wouldn't know it by driving through most Wasatch Front subdivisions. Large, lush and thirsty lawns, trees and flowers abound. Yards are so green you would think you're in Seattle.
Logan resident Jane Mecham grew up running around on green Utah grass, thinking that was pretty much the way yards were supposed to be. But then she moved to Mesa, Ariz., for five years, where yards are very different - tiny plots of hardy grass, native desert plants, rocks, gravel.
"It's nice to have a lot of grass to run around and play on, but it was nice to have the desert landscaping because it was very low-maintenance," she said.
She herself favors desert landscaping in order to conserve water.
Assuming certain large water projects are completed, predictions are that there will be enough water to supply the Wasatch Front for the next 25 years without significant change in residents' conservation habits. After that, as new residents continue to pour in, things will have to change.
"It is extremely likely that residents of the Greater Wasatch area will alter their consumption patterns dramatically as the price of water will increase," states the Quality Growth Efficiency Tools Technical Committee report. "As the sources of supply become more scarce and expensive, water conservation and landscaping practices will likely change dra-ma-ti-cally."
Nearly half of all culinary and secondary water in the Greater Wasatch area is currently used for summer yard and lawn watering.
"The numbers are scary," said David Ovard, general manager of the Salt Lake County Water Conservancy District. "Over the next 25 years we're going to need double the water supply, and over the next 50 years quadruple."
A few large - and expensive - water projects are planned for completion around 2015 that will keep things going for a while. The $300 million Bear River project, the treatment and use of Utah Lake water and the completion of the massive Central Utah Project are all planned, and tax hikes have been implemented and will continue to be implemented to pay for them.
Various groups say that even those projects are ill-advised and that serious conservation efforts should start now instead of when the area is forced into it.
"This is just pure pork," said Zachary Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council, an environmental group, of the Central Utah Project. He added that conservation and farmland conversion could save as much water as those projects will supply.
But getting Utahns to give up their beloved patches of green amid the desert is likely to be very difficult.
"I'm a little skeptical about how far we'll be able to take that," Ovard said. "I think people will resist giving up lawns and gardens - that's an important part of our lifestyle."
Assuming the Bear River project goes through, residents of Davis and Weber counties are the lucky ones - they're likely set for life without changing their habits. Ivan Flint, general manager of the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, said the project should last the area - which has relatively little developable room left - through build-out.
But in Salt Lake County and other areas, it's only a matter of time before water gets scarcer, costs start to rise and people start conserving simply to save money. Sooner or later, officials say, there will inevitably be a bit more of the desert blossoming as - the desert.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Issues Utahns are very concerned about:
Preserving Utah's suburban lifestyles 21%
Utah's economy 43%
Transportation 50%
Housing 39%
Education 66%
Crime 66%
Human services 40%
Environment 38%
Preserving Utah's traditional rural lifestyles 30%
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How concerned are Utahns about:
Preserving Utah's suburban lifestyle
Not Concerned Very Concerned
4% 4% 10% 13% 29% 18% 21%
Don't Know: 2%
This poll of 606 Utah residents was conducted by Dan Jones & Associates Dec. 18-20, 1997. It has a margin of error of +/-4 percent.
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Poll
Do you favor or oppose zoning which allows single-family housing mixed with apartment buildings and/or condominiums in local neighborhoods?
Strongly favor 14%
Somewhat favor 32%
Somewhat oppose 19%
Strongly oppose 29%
Don't know 6%
This poll of 606 Utah residents was conducted by Dan Jones & Associates Dec. 18-20, 1997. It has a margin of error of +/-4 percent.