Quote:
Originally Posted by ajiuO
^^^
I've spent a lot of time looking at old photos of Salt Lake.. It frankly blows my mind that this city has became so fragmented, scattered, and unpopulated. When I look at salt lake of the past it seems like a really dense populated city with lots of buildings and cool stuff to see.. It seems like we should have grown in to a much bigger city. In some ways it almost seems like less of a city now then it once was... Sure we have a few 30ish story buildings now... But there is not much density and infill.... It's like a giant parking lot with buildings scattered about... And to top that! All of the new infill being constructed is cheap looking, cowboy properties, stucco, —...What a shame :-(
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It is very much less a city today than it was through to the 1960s. We demolished a lot of structures for parking lots and disposable retail that then was demolished for even more parking. It's why the western edge of downtown SLC is so desolate and sparse beyond, really, West Temple. There is just too much lost development that made up a huge amount of the city's fabric until the 70s and 80s.
IMO, SLC is kind of like a rust belt city in the growing sun belt west. It has that rust belt feel. You know, industrial, older with minimal new development (neighborhoods) and defined by two eras - the pre-automobile and then the fight to stop suburban flight.
SLC grew its population every decade between 1860 and 1960. Then the 60s rolled around, suburban sprawl became 'the thing' with the completion of the interstates and the city spent thirty years between 1960 and 1990 losing population.
Compare that to other western cities:
Denver saw its population decrease in the 70s and 80s (though saw an increase, unlike SLC, in the 60s).
Boise saw its population increase in the 60s, 70s and 80s - with some of their biggest growth coming in the 70s with an increase of 117.5%.
Phoenix saw its population increase every decade between 1960 and 1990.
Albuquerque saw its population increase every decade between 1960 and 1990.
Las Vegas saw its population increase every decade between 1960 and 1990 - with the final few decades really advancing that growth.
Portland only saw one decade where its population decreased through that stretch - the 1970s.
Seattle saw a decrease in population in the 60s and 70s, but rebounded in the 1980s.
Sacramento saw its population increase every decade between 1960 and 1990.
I won't go into the larger cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, because that's irrelevant to SLC's development - but you see Salt Lake was extremely unique during a thirty year stretch. Not only were they losing people, they were losing it at a far larger extent (percentage wise) than any of the other cities I listed above.
So, the city shifted dramatically once the 80s rolled around and that shift led to the demolishing of some old, historic structures to keep up with the suburbs. The malls were built - buildings were also reclad and downtown took on a more suburban feel than what it had been throughout most its history.
It wasn't until the 90s, though, that people finally started moving back to the city. But up until that decade, SLC was almost certainly bucking the regional trend and acting very similar, though maybe not at near the level, as some of those midwest towns that lost a huge chunk of their population throughout the economic decline of the 70s and 80s - two decades that really ruined the American city.
Fortunately, we've been able to rebound far better than most rust belt cities and because of that, people are moving back into the city. But growth remains slow and I'm anxious to see what the predictions for this decade will yield because the 00s were not nearly as kind to SLC as the 90s (they only grew by 2.6%, down from 13.6% in the 90s).
Ultimately, that changed everything about the city. We kept most our neighborhoods (thank god for that), but we also lost a great deal of what made SLC's downtown unique.
When I look at this photo...I want to cry. Look at all the density lost with urban renewal. Imagine if western SLC looked like that today - it's have more in common with Portland than, say, Phoenix.
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