| Kristin Thompson
presented the Envision Utah project. The project is addressing issues of population growth and land use, development, and preservation in the Greater Wasatch Area of northern Utah. The area is home to 1.7 million people, 80 percent of the state's population. Another one million residents are expected by 2020, with a total population by 2050 of five million. The region, which runs one hundred miles north and south of Salt Lake City, includes 10 counties and 89 cities and towns. Envision Utah was charged with developing quality growth strategies for the region. The overall approach was to 1) develop a "baseline" future scenario describing "trend" conditions of development; 2) develop three alternative future growth scenarios representing different transportation and development patterns, 3) measure the performance of each scenario with respect to transportation, infrastructure costs, and environmental impacts; 4) select a preferred or "quality growth" scenario; and 5) develop strategies to implement the quality growth scenario.
The Envision Utah process is a broad-based partnership effort involving the general public, elected officials, stakeholder groups, and business leaders. A million-dollar awareness campaign was designed to educate the public about the characteristics and impacts of different alternatives, as well as to elicit feedback. Some of the public involvement activities have included:
- More than 100 public meetings in which residents were asked to give personal reactions and preferences to alternative growth scenarios;
- A detailed questionnaire completed by 17,000 residents to obtain feedback on the alternative growth scenarios;
- Three stakeholder meetings involving 240 attendees;
- Review of draft strategies by the public, elected officials, and stakeholders;
- Following adoption of the quality growth strategy, selection of eight cities in the region to host site-specific Community Design Workshops to examine and discuss how Envision Utah growth strategies could be applied to development sites in their communities.
Workshops utilized interactive techniques such as allocating land use icons within a series of walkable and non-walkable development types. Through extensive research and exhaustive involvement of the public, local and state elected officials, the business, civic, and religious communities, and other stakeholders, Envision Utah has gathered information about what residents value and how they think growth should be accommodated. The result of this partnering process was the development of six growth accommodation goals to be met in order to protect the environment and maintain economic vitality and quality of life.
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