Years after Washington Square was occupied by activists in protest of plans to shutter the downtown Road Home shelter, the land the shelter once sat upon has a new name, the Luma. The reclamation of this land by capital was long in the making, tracing several decades of struggle over the future of downtown. ButContinue reading “Reclaiming the Rio Grande”
Tag Archives: Salt Lake City
Vacant Luxury – What the Economic Development Engine Wrought along the S-Line
“[The S-Line is] primarily an economic development engine and secondarily, a transportation mode.” University of Utah Professor Reid Ewing for the Salt Lake Tribune Trains are cool and streetcars are no exception. Walking along Parleys trail is absolutely lovely and seeing the S-Line glide by is pure bliss. But the S-Line wasn’t built for meContinue reading “Vacant Luxury – What the Economic Development Engine Wrought along the S-Line”
Planning for Displacement: Gentrification and the North Temple Boulevard Master Plan
On August 10th, 2010, the Salt Lake City Council voted to adopt the North Temple Boulevard Master Plan. A decade later, that plan would be used to displace at least three families from their homes. In 2019 the Kozo displaced two families, three years later the Chicago Street Townhomes displaced another. All three families wereContinue reading “Planning for Displacement: Gentrification and the North Temple Boulevard Master Plan”
Don’t Expect Gentrifiers to Understand | A Response to Building Salt Lake
This article is a response to an article written by Taylor Anderson for Building Salt Lake on the Kozo apartment complex on Feb. 17, 2022: https://www.buildingsaltlake.com/west-side-project-that-stalled-amid-protests-is-back-with-revisions/ Two weeks ago, Taylor Anderson wrote an article for Building Salt Lake looking at the updated plans for the Kozo House Apartments development in the Rose Park neighborhood. ApartContinue reading “Don’t Expect Gentrifiers to Understand | A Response to Building Salt Lake”
Transit Done Wrong
During the George Floyd uprising in the Summer of 2020, the marches through Salt Lake City would often stop on one of the Trax lines downtown with the “organizers” of the march claiming that by disrupting the Trax we were in fact putting a damper on the creation of money (that is value production) inContinue reading “Transit Done Wrong”
Redlining | Laying the Foundations of a Segregated City
The history of city planning is the history of spatial segregation. It surprises no-one that there are upper and lower class areas in cities, affordability is often the privilege of pollution, disrepair, concentrated poverty, and disinvestment. In Salt Lake County, the divide is stark, following the topography of the valley. The upper class neighborhoods sitContinue reading “Redlining | Laying the Foundations of a Segregated City”
Capital-Oriented Development
Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is all the rage, seemingly the perfect solution to our current housing and climate crises. Dense, often mixed use, development close to public transit brings urban living to suburban neighborhoods and encourages transit-use over car-use, what more could you ask for? In fact, even the Utah State Legislature is so taken withContinue reading “Capital-Oriented Development”