The size of the city of Salt Lake (Salt Lake City, West Valley City: homes, neighborhoods)

[prairiestate]

How did SLC (the city itself, not the metro area) end up getting stuck at such a small size. With fewer then 200,000 residents, it's size is on par with Des Moines or Grand Rapids. The metro area is well over 1 million in size, which leaves SLC with a very small and shrinking share of the metro population, despite being the central city. Even some of it's suburbs are catching up. West Valley City is at around 130,000. It seems like SLC is going to end up more as a preeminent suburb, rather then a dominant city.

[PGKangrui]

It's smaller in area than most major cities.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by prairiestate

How did SLC (the city itself, not the metro area) end up getting stuck at such a small size. With fewer then 200,000 residents, it's size is on par with Des Moines or Grand Rapids. The metro area is well over 1 million in size, which leaves SLC with a very small and shrinking share of the metro population, despite being the central city. Even some of it's suburbs are catching up. West Valley City is at around 130,000. It seems like SLC is going to end up more as a preeminent suburb, rather then a dominant city.

Living in Cottonwood Heights, as I do, I really do think of all of the suburbs as being part of Salt Lake City. It used to bother me that the city itself wasn't growing, but the way I look at it now, it's all Salt Lake. I can either put Salt Lake City or Cottonwood Heights on my mail and it gets here just fine. I think of all of the suburbs as neighborhoods, which makes it feel like we're just all one big, happy city.

[Lamborgotti]

Suburbs are more in line with the popular lifestyles of Utahns, so naturally the suburbs have grown as developable land within the city boundaries has become rarer and more expensive. It's not that there's something undesirable about the city, if that's what you're wondering.. Salt Lake will probably always be the largest city in the valley (maybe not if South Jordan never splits up), because once the large western suburbs fill in, growth will level off dramatically. Salt Lake is much more likely to grow up than any other city in the valley, so it's probably the one that would receive the most growth should the valley be forced to become more urban.

Salt Lake City is actually quite large in terms of area, but the population is quite small, again because of the preference for single family homes, but also because much of the land within the boundaries is not developable. There are huge industrial areas in the west side of the city that aren't even zoned to allow residential developments. Much of the foothills are also within the city limits, as well as the airport, and so on. Really, the only open space left is in very undesirable areas, such as the northwest quadrant (west of the airport).

[SouthernBelleInUtah]

The older part of town was developed before high-rises were possible. We have so much land in the valley that no one ever bothered to tear down the low-rises and build mega buildings. We like our scenery, too.

[Chango]

A lot of it has to do with the way the state developed. The LDS church was big on centralized planning, and specifically created towns meant to be urban centers (SLC, Farmington, Provo, Ogden, Logan, Fillmore, St George, ect) ringed by agricultural zones from the very beginning.

The centers were never really shifted (tradition, I guess), even when the periphery outgrew them. Therefore you have plenty of city centers that are tiny in compared other once tiny farming hamlets that have grown huge since the mid-1800s. Most all the Wasatch Front hub cities are that way (Layton is vastly larger than Farmington now, Orem just as big as Provo, WVC and Sandy just as big as SLC), ect.

[DelaneyRudd]

As long as downtown and the capital are in Salt Lake it will be a hub. San Francisco isn't the biggest town in it's metro area.

[MrAnderson]

It's very simple: 100 Sq. miles and maybe half of that is in the airport and northwest quadrant which can't be developed. To compare, cities like Houston, Dallas, Phoenix are all over five times the land area. And Salt Lake City's population is not shrinking, it grew again this past census. There's a lot of dense infill going on. If you're interested in seeing some of those projects and more urbanization of the area: UtahUrbanForum.com • View forum - Salt Lake City Residential Developments

[mlb]

SOME areas of Salt Lake grew.... Sandy lost 10,000 people in 10 years.

Kids grew up and moved out. The same will happen everywhere if housing prices rise.