Is the court defeat of a large development at the old Cottonwood Mall site a death knell for high-density housing in suburban Utah?
It's not good news, but it’s not going to doom us to sprawl, either. The Utah Supreme Court essentially took away one method that city leaders could use to carve out higher density development without neighbors being able to kill it.
The lesson, ultimately, is that city leaders still need to bring their constituents along with them. The resistance to putting more people in the suburbs will be overcome not by force but by evolving attitudes.