Case Study:

Envision Utah

Context

State Technical Assistance

The Envision Utah partnership has its own staff and operates mostly with private funds and no direct state financing, but much of its technical work has been prepared by a state/local technical committee coordinated by the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget. The state's technical support to the Envision Utah partnership began in 1996 and is known as QGET (Quality Growth Efficiency Tools). The focus of QGET is to enhance technical modeling tools, data, and processes, so that decision-makers have information related to air quality, transportation, water, and land use that is comprehensive, reliable, accessible, and consistent. The QGET Technical Committee consists of technical representatives from state and local government and the private sector. The Governor's Office of Planning and Budget coordinates QGET's work.

After its formation, QGET compiled an inventory of planning models in Utah. The committee then developed or assisted with the development of models to improve analysis of air pollution, infrastructure costs, auto ownership, and land use. Working with its local government and private sector partners, QGET then analyzed the transportation, air quality, land use, water use, and infrastructure cost impacts of alternative futures. This analysis has taken the form of a projected baseline future (the future based on existing plans and trends); four alternative futures, designed to delineate a spectrum of choices; and, finally, the recommended Quality Growth Strategy. The QGET technical analyses benefited from the input of 88 cities, 10 counties, two metropolitan planning organizations, five state agencies, PSOMAS Engineering, and Fregonese Calthorpe Associates.

QGET provides technical support not only to Envision Utah, but to state agencies conducting demographic and economic forecasting, transportation systems planning, air quality analysis, water supply planning, land use data management, affordable housing programs, and community development. QGET's data and analysis products are available free of charge to jurisdictions that can use them. Their products have included:

The integration of 60 local government master plans in a GIS database;
Air quality measurements taken from 25 meteorological stations and 35 industrial point sources of pollution;
Transportation modeling results;
Development of mathematical relationships relating infrastructure cost to density; and
Seven gigabytes of GIS data, describing current and projected land use by type and a host of related variables, and 1.7 gigabytes of economic and demographic projection data.

QGET has resulted in a coordinated effort that simultaneously provides technical support to Envision Utah and other planning efforts, as well as improving the longer-term capabilities of the state to formally model and understand growth.

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