Photo by Brent Pace on Unsplash

Utah’s Walkable ‘15-Minute City’ Could Still Leave Lots of Room for Cars

A planned community set to rise in a suburb near Salt Lake City could feature a network of shared mobility hubs and walking trails — plus tens of thousands of parking spots. 

The developers of “The Point,” a master-planned community set to rise in a Utah suburb between Salt Lake City and Provo, envision their project as a “15-minute city”: Plans describe a live-work community with some 7,400 residential units and at least 30,000 jobs, all located just a short walk from schools, workplaces, retail, restaurants and recreation.

Unlike some other recent proposals for “zero-driving” developments, however, The Point promises to be a place for cars, too.

“It’s not that no one has a car,” said Peter Kindel, an urban design and planning principal at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill who helped create the framework plan for the site that project overseers approved last year. “We’re suggesting it’s more than possible to live with one car to make that big-box [store] trip or go skiing. But for families and young people that are going to be part of the community, they won’t need that on a day-to-day basis.”

The development, which is being led by the government-appointed Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, will sit on about 600 acres of state-owned land that’s currently occupied by the Utah State Prison. According to a new transportation study developed for the site, residents would move around on walking trails and bikeways, augmented by various shared mobility options. But the original framework plan also identifies more than 40,800 parking spaces — to be housed mainly inside buildings, out of view — for the 13,000 residents and 31,000 office workers projected to populate the area.


Read the full article on City Lab Transportation

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