Salt Lake City
We’ve been through Salt Lake City quite a few times this year, and more than any other place in America, it possesses a dominating atmosphere. There are surveillance systems in all public spaces, architecture is uniform to a draconian degree, and there are an unnerving amount of young adults heading huge families It’s taken me a while to come to terms with just what it is that creeps me out so much about the place. Things finally clicked this trip- possibly with the help of the gracious hospitality of the Mimicking Birds- and I finally ‘got it.’ There is nothing about the LDS religion itself or its practitioners that bothers me- actually, they tend to be the nicest people I’ve ever met. As we sped away from the venue and out toward our friends’ house in the suburb of Herriman, I was first struck by the way that the regional Temple structure was lit up to look like it was a white glowing ball of energy perched on the hillside. But then I really got to concentrating on the roads themselves. Salt Lake’s road system is definitely the best in America- six lane highways radiate far from the city in regular intervals, ring roads provide inter-suburban transit, and smaller (four lane) feeder roads branch off into vast suburbs of identical beige homes, each with a neighborhood church within a block or two. Within the city limits, one can drive for several minutes at 55 mph between stoplights and outposts of Big Box stores- much of the space between is completely empty. These roads are overbuilt to such a ridiculous degree that it seems clear that Salt Lake is planning to become not only America’s next mega city, but also the world’s. I can only assume that the other major infrastructural systems are equally robust, and if this is true it seems reasonable to assume that the city is planning for an influx of about 20 million people in the next 50 years. What’s the point of thinking about this? I guess there’s none- whether or not the people of Salt Lake believe that their city will become the world’s next Jerusalem or Mecca in the coming century is their business alone. Pretty interesting though..
