ST U D I O S
17
IN S IT E S
BIOREGIONAL
ANALYSIS & PLAN NING This year’s Bioregional Planning Fall 2019 course embarked
its citizens and exacerbating natural and man-made hazards
on a new project to wrestle with the future of the Wasatch
such as bad air, limited water, wildfire risk, and earthquake
Front. The course was an intense initiation into planning
risk. Growth will likely replace agriculture and outdoor spaces
methods, theories and frameworks that are intended to help
with sprawling development.
the student understand and evaluate long-term impacts of decisions and policies created today. Much of the course was
To gain insight into the public process, the class organized a
spent working on a relatively new planning process as part of
Geodesign Workshop with dozens of professionals invited
the International Geodesign Collaboration. Students worked
from outside the department to partake in a collaborative
through numerous iterations of posters, spatial analytics and
design process. The students organized the workshop,
value statements to come up with the studio project theme,
in partnership with GeodesignHub, integrating students
Wasatch Front Planning 2050: Growth Meets Hazard.
from LAEP’s Introduction to GIS course, and over a dozen individuals from outside the university with other faculty
As if long-range planning is not hard enough, students
experts participating in the activity. The students prepared
worked on integrating the unpredictability of natural hazards
for the workshop by generating a number of different
into the mix. Some of these hazards are very visible to the
models, ranging from process models (the way systems
public (e.g. air quality), but earthquakes, floods, fire, and
function) to change models (quantitative geospatial metrics).
liquefaction (combination of earthquakes, soils and water)
After the workshop ended, students spent the last three
are not always on the radar of the general public and are
weeks of class pulling together the variety of different
sometimes difficult to characterize in planning processes,
planning ideas to develop different possible outcomes
as these risks are not easy to quantify and the when and
for these scenarios (no adoption, early adoption and late
where of their impact are uncertain. Juxtaposed to these
adoption). Each of these scenarios were assessed across the
risks is the 3rd fastest growing region in the United States
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to identify
with a 47% population increase from 2010 to 2018. It is also
the impacts of each. The results of this project will be
unique: a metropolitan area boasting world-class skiing and
part of the International Design Collaboration Conference
hiking, flanked by the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau.
February 2021.
The draw from these natural features, combined with a high birthrate and high immigration from other parts of the United States, has put the population of the Wasatch Front on track to double by 2050. This growth presents both opportunities and challenges, straining the valley’s ability to provide for
