Here’s what Utahns think about how the state should grow

Utahns are the most ambivalent they’ve been in 20 years about growth pressures on the state, but most don’t seem to want government to try to halt those trends.

A new statewide survey shows large majorities of urban and rural residents seek a more nuanced approaches from their state and local leaders on new housing development, water conservation, multiple modes of transportation and saving open spaces as they cope with change.

The state-endorsed poll and related conversations — called Guiding Our Growth — are meant to inform and shape future planning and policy as the Beehive State’s population is projected to go from over three million people today to five million or more around 2050.

Distilled from 15 public workshops and online polling conducted by nonprofit planning firm Envision Utah since May, its scenario-based findings were released in detail Wednesday at Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute — in advance of January’s general session of the Utah Legislature.

“We know now we can’t take the quality of life here for granted,” said Andrew Gruber, executive director of Wasatch Front Regional Council, a metropolitan planning agency. “The choices that we’re making today will have a significant impact on the future in the years and decades to come.”

Along with nudging state lawmakers, the document is likely to buttress future land planning in Utah’s 245 cities and towns.

For the Wasatch Front, the new data will also be infused into a newly updated community blueprint called Wasatch Choice Vision. The plan offers recommendations and strategies on coordinating transportation investments, development patterns and economic opportunity.

The latest results reveals major differences of opinion from those living in Utah’s rural and urban areas, among younger and older residents and for those with different income levels, particularly on key issues like housing and transportation.

And not everywhere in Utah, of course, is growing.

About half of those living in rural areas with slow- to no-growth patterns said told the Guiding Our Growth survey they’d like to add some local job opportunities but a third also said they want their community to stay the same — even if that meant future generations might struggle to find employment.

Housing

Wednesday’s data emerges amid several recent and powerful signals of the dire effects of Utah’s crisis over housing, which analysts say has never been less affordable in a 50-year history.

“One of the greatest threats to our long-term economic success,” said Natalie Gochnour, director of Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, “is a housing market that has a large shortage and rapidly appreciating prices.”

Fully 60% of urban Utahns, the survey found, want to allow new housing in currently undeveloped areas, but also near transit and town centers and in appropriate areas within existing neighborhoods.

Only 19%, meanwhile, seek restrictions on housing development as a way to slow growth.

“Fighting growth is a sure way of turning us into high-cost, poorly planned markets,” one urban poll participant commented. “Let’s be intentional about how we grow and take charge of that growth before it overwhelms us.”

Those living in rural areas, in contrast, would prefer new housing built around major streets and town centers in their communities.

“Many of us have lived in Utah for a long time and hate the growth,” a rural participant told pollsters. “Our quality of life suffers with too much growth too fast.”

But across both urban and rural residents alike, it was younger residents, renters and those with generally lower incomes who tended to want to promote more housing options, while those in living southwest Utah, folks over 55 and homeowners were more likely to prefer housing restrictions.

Majorities of city and country dwellers alike want to allow new houses to be built on smaller lots. And near-majorities of both want stronger limits on short-term rentals in their midst.

In urban areas, residents want more town homes, duplexes and accessory dwellings. Rural residents favor more investments in roads and utilities to support additional housing construction, as well as more prefabricated and modular homes.

Water

In light of the state’s ongoing drought conditions and drying up of the Great Salt Lake, Utahns living in cities want more aggressive water conservation efforts, the poll finds. Those efforts include water-wise landscaping rules, making development more compact and incentives for residents to convert their existing lawns.

Rebates and incentives for water-wise conversions, in fact, drew deep support across the spectrum, with 80% supporting them in urban areas and 70% rural.

“We’ve given up our privilege to waste water,” one urban poll participant said. “If we want to continue to live and thrive here in Utah, we need to do our part to conserve.”

Rural residents feel much the same as their urban counterparts on most aspects of water, but with 57% also supporting investments that optimize agricultural irrigation and higher support for investments in large water projects, such as new reservoirs and pipelines.

There is a stronger consensus in urban areas that conserving water in new residential developments and existing communities is the way to go, while investments in improving irrigation techniques seem to draw more support in rural areas.

Only around 20% of city dwellers and 29% of rural residents felt that pinching off housing development was a viable strategy for reducing future water demand.

“I think it’s ridiculous to only conserve water with new developments,” one rural respondent commented. “That’s not a strong water conservation tactic at all.”

Transportation

The poll also reveals strong support for public transportation, with 75% of urban residents and 58% in rural areas supporting more publicly funded travel options.

Across urban Utah, majorities of residents want transportation that is located so as to focus new development in town centers, along with enhanced walkability, more biking and additional zero-fare mass transit, funded with government backing.

“Public transportation needs to be more convenient than driving and parking,” said one urban resident. “We’ve prioritized freeways for long enough. Now we need to prioritize public transportation.”

Only 7% of city dwellers want to make a priority of new and expanded highways and roads into new suburbs.

Two-thirds of urban residents also see building more apartments, condominiums and town homes hear transit stations as a major solution to congestion and parking woes.

Rural Utahns favor balancing new development and road upgrades between their community’s Main Street and town center as well as country roads on the edge of town.

These residents also worry about road maintenance and new congestion from housing development, but they favor more bike trails and better sidewalks, too, along with impact fees on developers to help pay for community improvements.

“I favor mixed, in-town and out-of-town solutions,” a rural resident told pollsters, “so people have choices based on personal preference and what they can afford.”

Open Space

After decades of watching green expanses vanish beneath development across the state, Utahns want open spaces preserved within and on the periphery of their communities.

In urban areas, 56% of residents favor building master-planned communities with ample parks, trails and shared open spaces, while 75% want stepped up investments in recreational amenities, including trailheads and campgrounds in natural areas and parkways and river trails in urban zones.

“Let’s be good stewards of our land,” said an urban commenter, “by taking up less of it.”

Along with master planning, fully 40% of city dwellers want their communities to “fill in” instead of growing “outward” as a way of saving green spaces

Some 73% of urban residents want more investments in trailheads, camping sites, trails for biking, hiking and off-road vehicles, as well as the Jordan River Parkway through Salt Lake County, the Virgin River Trail outside St. George and along Murdock Canal in Utah County.

They also want more of the state’s new libraries, recreation centers and facilities for seniors designed to include outdoor recreation spaces, along with more parks, plazas and gathering spots within their communities.

A little more than a third of rural residents favor master-planned communities as a way of preserving open space. But 58% support putting a premium on prime farmlands in long-range, land-use planning and many see building new housing on smaller lots close to town as a good strategy for saving land.

Only 8% of rural residents think building new housing on large, spread-out lots will help preserve open space, although anecdotally, they advocate for a slower pace of growth on larger acreages that keeps an open, country feel in their communities.

Similarly, only 6% of urban dwellers favored construction of more new neighborhoods with large yards.

Added one rural resident: “Allow the market to determine what’s desirable.”