Challenging 'Mountain Urbanism, Mountain Modernism'

Joe Andrade recently attended a mayoral conference titled "Mountain Urbanism, Mountain Modernism" in Salt Lake City and found the local political leadership's urbanist prescriptions for population growth (the population is expected to double in the next 25-30 years) to be inadequate.

"No amount of high density housing, public transit, 'repurposing' or recycling will allow us to double the population in this or other Wasatch Front valleys in the next 25 years without asphyxiating," says Andrade.

Rather, Andrade suggests cultural change might be more critical in addressing the pressures that follow population growth: "we need to address the local culture’s — and its politicians’ — emphasis on large families, large homes, private automobiles, 80 mph speed limits, golf courses, asphalt, energy waste, excess water use and other activities and even ideologies based on the now excessive use of material and natural resources."