Dynamic development: university place creates model for next generation city centers.

• Author: Christensen, Lisa

By the year 2050, the state of Utah's population is going to nearly double. With the country's youngest population and highest birth rate, the state is poised for a population boom that could radically alter its cities, communities and open spaces.

Fortunately, government officials, community leaders and developers are planning now for the rising population tide, hoping to lay a framework for growth that will preserve the things Utahns love about their state: friendly neighborhoods, thriving communities and majestic open spaces.

In 2013, a nonprofit, nonpartisan community organization called Envision Utah launched a survey process to help Utahns envision what they want their communities to look like in the coming decades. In the Your Utah, Your Future process, over 400 stakeholders and experts identified key choices surrounding topics like air quality, transportation and communities, housing, and jobs and the economy. More than 52,000 Utahns participated in the survey, sketching a blueprint for the future of the state, as well as a strategy for making it happen.

THE STRATEGY

* Develop an interconnected pattern of mixed-use neighborhood, village, town and urban centers that bring destinations and opportunities closer to people.

* Build a balanced transportation system that makes it convenient to get around with or without a car.

* Provide a variety of neighborhoods Utahns can choose from, while allowing the housing market to provide a variety of housing options in all communities.

* Connect communities with a system of trails and parks.

* Plan development so that future roads, public transportation, power lines, water lines, job centers, etc., can be accommodated easily and inexpensively.

COMPETING VISIONS

While the Envision Utah survey helps paint a picture of Utah's future, the strategies outlined are not new to local developers, who for years have been creating transit-oriented, mixed-use developments along the state's population-dense Wasatch Front. For developers, such developments are simply meeting an existing demand.

Any change in development trends is driven by both changes in what cities want in their community and what customers want, says Randall Woodbury, president of the Woodbury Corporation, and the resulting projects aim to combine those visions and desires with what will actually work.

"Development trends over the years are largely guided by city planners--a collective of individuals who dream of a community as they think it could or should be. Good developers are also driven to build and improve communities with quality places to live, work, shop, find services and provide entertainment. Developers...