Salt Lake is among many cities nationwide being pressured to rethink urban planning for more efficient land use, as well as institute better building standards and promote more public transport. It also eats up wildlife habitat and farmland and threatens the planet’s sustainability: In the last 16 years, the US has lost 24 million acres of natural land in part to housing sprawl-an amount of land equivalent to nine Grand Canyon National Parks, according to the Center for American Progress. Urban sprawl contributes to a third of all greenhouse gas emissions around the globe, and if that sprawl were to be curbed, it could slow climate change, according to research by Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The authors chalked the reason up to one simple thing: lots and lots of cars. In 2018, a study by University of Utah researchers found that over a decade carbon dioxide emissions increased in suburban areas southwest of Salt Lake City-while similar population growth in the center of the city did not. Utahns, like all Americans, live by the ethos of open spaces, cars, and single-family homes, and the Salt Lake City area in particular possesses plenty of cheap and available land.Īs a result of sprawl, Salt Lake has the seventh-worst air quality in the world, according to an analysis by California-based digital media firm Quote 360. Yet both Utah and Salt Lake City tend to hover at the top of some less desirable lists as well-mainly for worst sprawl, bad traffic, and air pollution. By 2065, Salt Lake County’s population of 1.2 million people could grow by 50 percent, adding 600,000 new residents, according to a University of Utah study. With its population surging 18.4 percent over the past decade to 3.28 million people, according to the US Census Bureau, Utah is now the fastest-growing place in the nation. The boom in Salt Lake City is not surprising, given that both the state of Utah and the Salt Lake City area routinely land at the top of nationwide population growth, economic growth, lowest taxes, best education, best business climate, and best place to live lists. This construction comes at the same time as a $4.1 billion renovation of the city’s airport and a controversial 20,000-acre inland port. We now have an opportunity to rethink how Salt Lake City grows.” New projects on the horizonĭevelopers are heeding that call, embarking on a slew of ambitious buildings in the city’s core-some of which will reach 37-stories high. “There just isn’t the landmass to keep growing out. ![]() ![]() “Over the last five to 10 years we’ve noticed an expansion of the area that’s just unsustainable,” says Andrew Wittenberg, marketing and research manager for Salt Lake City’s Department of Economic Development. Several years ago, Utah earned the dubious honor of having the second-fastest urban sprawl rate in the country-with Salt Lake City ranked one of the worst. The urban frenzy is in sharp contrast to the decades of outward growth of Salt Lake City over four counties along the Wasatch Front. After years of growing out, Salt Lake City may finally grow up.Ĭranes and construction vehicles have taken to the city streets as myriad developers embark on 24 large urban buildings that will remake the skyline of a city that, up until recently, has been described as “one really big town.”
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