Salt Lake isn't higher-density, though. It's compact sprawl - but it's still sprawl. The only reason it's compact is due to the natural boundaries that you don't necessarily get in other regions. Still, from Logan on down to the southern area of Utah County, almost all of it is sprawl - with tiny pockets of actual urban development.
Unfortunately, the movement over the last decade or so to limit sprawl has been half-assed a lot of the time and it's given us faux-urban living.
This is compact:
It's also still sprawl. There really isn't anything urban about it except that there are more homes. The problem with sprawl goes beyond just the fact homes are spread out - it's that they continue to be isolated which forces residents to use their car.
But let's be honest, in the SL Valley, much of everything west of I-15 is sprawl and most everything south of I-80 is either an older form of sprawl or the more damaging newer one.
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