Quote:
Originally Posted by jimmycdii
I agree with you for the reasons you mentioned. Also, I think Salt Lake is one of the few, and maybe the only, city to conceive of itself as a "city." I was living in Provo before I moved to SLC and there's a lot of interest there among city officials and a core of residents to go more urban.
But my sense was that most residents still saw the city as a small city, even a town, despite the fact that it's not technically that much smaller than SLC (60,000-ish residents, I think). They opposed things like infill (of any sort, ugh) and basically just wanted low density, single family homes everywhere. Which would be fine, except that single family neighborhoods in cities like Provo and Ogden begin fairly close their downtowns, so there's little room for dense development.
And Provo is projected to become the 2nd biggest city in Utah over the next generation (I've been pouring through census data for my job lately). I think in fast-growing but even more suburban cities like S. Jordan, WVC, Lehi etc., there is even less taste for high density development. Even if planners want to sustain the growth, I doubt residents are going to be willing to tear down swaths of dilapidated homes to put up mid-rises.
My sense is that while SLC still has NIMBY struggles, there's a large area that everyone agrees should at least be "urban." For that reason, it seems, it'll be able to move more quickly and efficiently toward the kind of development that most people on this forum (including me) favor.
So, in other words, I guess I'm saying attitudes in SLC may ultimately make the difference. Moving from one city to the other really emphasized this too me.
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About a decade-plus ago, there was talk about West Valley City becoming Utah's largest city. It was a real concern considering, prior to the 2000 Census, Salt Lake had lost population over the decades prior - and WVC was growing at a fairly steady pace. However, while growth has continued in that city, it's tapered off quite a bit compared to where it was in 2000 - when it grew by 25%. In 2010, it was only at 18.9% (its lowest since incorporation) and there is no indication, especially from that article posted by the Tribune, that it'll grow at that 25% rate this decade. So, its growth is not much different than Salt Lake's (currently, the estimates put it at 2.3% since 2010 and SLC is at 1.5% - not the difference they would have to be growing at to pass Salt Lake).
For South Jordan, they've yet to even hit 75,000, and I wouldn't be surprised if, like WVC, their growth slows considerably in a decade or so when another boom town takes over somewhere in the area (and remember, SLC continues to add population - something it wasn't doing between 1960 and 1990. That's huge because even though they might not be adding at the percentage of some of these suburbs, it's often enough to keep 'em well ahead of the second or third or fourth largest cities in the valley).
So, while South Jordan has seen 10.9% change since 2010, they
only gained 5,516 residents. To compare, Salt Lake gained nearly 3,000 - a bit behind, but not dramatic enough for anyone to think South Jordan will overtake Salt Lake anytime soon. And WVC? They've gained about the same amount of overall people as SLC in that span.
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