Suppose we hurled 1,000 Utahns from 1950 through a quantum tunnel to 2022. We asked them, “How do you feel about the changes in your community?” “What values of yours have we preserved through 72 years of growth?” “Did we successfully uphold your ‘community,’ the ‘character’ of where you live, its ‘uniqueness’?”
What answers would we get from these Perry Como fans? Which ones would be worth listening to? If we had to, how would we explain that many of their objections are mired in a dead sociocultural framework?
With growth comes change. As economist Thomas Picketty observed about the United States in his book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” “When a country goes from a population of 3 million to a population of 300 million …it is clearly no longer the same country.”
The U.S. of 2022 is physically, legally and culturally different from the U.S. of 1791 — and some of the differences must be a function of growth, while others are knock-on effects of growth.
In Utah, the population has grown by a factor of 300 since 1850. Today, the Salt Lake community is nothing like a Christian utopia where “tippling houses” and “dram-shops” were restrained or prohibited, with all “free white male inhabitants…entitled to vote” (Laws and Ordinances of the State of Deseret).
Even within a human lifespan, growth is largely chaotic and unpredictable, especially in the world’s third largest country where citizens can freely move around, where planning is decentralized and markets boom and bust. That is what the majority wants.
The state of Utah is asking for our input in the “Guiding Our Growth” survey. Please fill it out. But also ask yourself some high-level questions, and then pose some to the state of Utah.
Examples: How can we cool the real-estate market? If city planning is done in piecemeal, with no attempt at overview, will the result be fair from the viewpoint of the least well-off? If we want to grow and have cleaner air, what policies will we need? Let us assume that the state government is not going to stop in-migration, not prioritize fairness unless we demand it, and not foresee and stop the next bubble.
The truth is that adding 1% to our population, year over year, will change the character of communities. If we add 1% to our population in the next year, then we will have added the equivalent of American Fork.
No one is arguing there is nothing within our control, but it must be underlined that wanting growth and preservation is wanting the impossible. Wanting growth is wanting change. If you want new businesses, then you invite the possibility of old businesses being displaced or gobbled up. If you want new housing, then you invite the possibility of old neighborhoods looking and feeling different.
The only sensible and compassionate path through growth is asking for maximally utilitarian sense-making and compassion from decision-makers. As our city doubles, the Haves will band together to make sure the growing pains are only felt in the Have-Not neighborhoods, and the only antidote to that power play is interrogating how broad and concrete the utilitarian vision of decision-makers is.
We cannot settle for gestures toward the greatest good. In short sweeps of time, the causes of “character” and “uniqueness” are fool’s errands. What we should want is a community that anybody would want to join because of how skillfully and inclusively and compassionately it deals with change.
(Doug Carter) Matthew Ivan Bennett.
Matthew Ivan Bennett is a resident playwright of Salt Lake City’s Plan-B Theatre Company. He’s written radio plays for KUER’s RadioWest and his poetry has appeared in Sugar House Review, Utah Life and Western Humanities.
