SLC grid uninspiring | The Salt Lake Tribune

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Re "Urban designers in Salt Lake City praise innovations of the 'Mormon Grid'" (Tribune, June 5):

Brigham Young may have been inspired in his city street plans, but he certainly wasn't prophetic about their future use.

Maybe the "Mormon Grid" of streets was a good innovation for all the many villages that Brother Brigham settled. Many still have charm, and their sameness is comforting and quaint.

But there is nothing inspired about the grid when it is geometrically and irrationally extended into infinity. The extension of Salt Lake's grid to fill the entire valley is like the ugly growth of a cancer. It is aping the never-ending, auto-dependant, bland sameness, urban model of Los Angeles, and that is no compliment.

Salt Lake is becoming one big, ugly urban sprawl based on the Mormon Grid. That's hardly an "innovation," at least not one to celebrate.

Clarke M. Brown

Sandy