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Mega-suburb takes shape in Utah

 

Mining company builds community for half a million people

 

Friday, April 7, 2006; Posted: 12:59 p.m. EDT (16:59 GMT)

 

WEST JORDAN, Utah (AP) -- It's a development plan that will take more than 50 years from start to finish. A string of "walkable" communities, expected eventually to house half a million people, is starting to rise on the nation's largest piece of privately owned land next to a metropolis.

Light rail connecting to the metro, walking trails, porches.  If nothing else, it's already got three things over a typical suburban development.

Not what I was expecting when I saw "Mega-suburb" in the thread title.  Sounds like it will be nice, too bad we can't get more developments like this instead of the common subdivisions which are almost completed isolated from the rest of the community.

^ I was pleasantly surprised too.

 

We should do something like this with the massive Ravenna Arsenal, assuming we can find all the buried munitions!

"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck

I'm thinking wishfully far into the future, or maybe fantasizing is a better word for it -- imagine people forsaking sprawling suburbs and exasperating, expensive car commuting and moving into dense planned communities with walkable services and convenient transit, and the sprawling suburbs beset by plummeting property values and falling into disuse and decay and then being bulldozed to restore the wetlands and farmland that were destroyed to build them.

 

Imagine a whole new industrial sector, for a few years, anyway, based on recycling vinyl siding, SUVs, and $5,000 lawnmowers.

I would love to see some images....maybe some site plans, renderings, etc....

I just learned that a Cleveland-based consultant was part of the early concept planning for this mega-burb. He brought Kennecott reps to Cleveland and showed them Shaker Heights -- a planned suburb. Hence, light rail was added to the planned mega-burb.

 

Glad to see we can be a model for other areas. Too bad suburbs in our own metro area take Shaker Heights for granted.

"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck

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