Crappy Houses

[Hans Fugal]

Michael Torrie wrote:
> Hans Fugal wrote:
>> Anyway, my take on it is it's a crying shame that people are dumb but 
>> it's not news. It's a crying shame that Utah is filling up and space is 
>> limited, limiting your choices (or forcing you to a longer commute), but 
>> it is.
> 
> Utah is hardly filling up--the wasatch front is. 

Yeah, s/Utah/Wasatch Front/g in my post. I thought of that near the end 
but was too lazy to change it. :)

> It was a natural
> evolution, but without any planning whatsoever, and that's tragic.  The
> subdivisions are all in the wrong places.  If, 100 years ago, growth had
> been planned for, then most of the cities would not be where they are
> today.  Instead subdivisions would have been built in the west deserts
> and on marginal land, leaving the wasatch valley area available for farm
> land and orchards.  When SLC was founded, it was planned such that
> people could live among the land that they farmed, which was sensible
> for the 1800s.  Utah could be fairly self-sufficient in terms of basic
> food production.  Today the farmland is all but gone in the fertile areas.
> 
> But of course that's totally fine because food comes from grocery stores
> now anyway.  And we probably don't have enough water for both people and
> orchards anyway.

Good points, but perhaps the more tragic consequence of lack of planning 
is the abysmal transportation system. One corridor (a freeway and a 
couple of frontage roads) just doesn't cut it, and will continue to 
become a more serious problem as growth continues.

-- 
Hans Fugal ; http://hans.fugal.net

There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the
right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
     -- Johann Sebastian Bach