I asked Dalle-3 to “Create two images side-by-side, one representing Utah in a good light and one representing Utah in a bad light. Show me images that show bad things particular to Utah and good things particular to Utah, instead of just generic bad and good things.”
In the image it generated “the left side highlights Utah’s natural beauty and outdoor activities, while the right side depicts issues like smog from the Salt Lake City inversion, a dried-up Great Salt Lake, and urban congestion.”
For my family living in Utah is the eternal question (“next year in Utah”). Like a lot of members, we have a lot of ties leading back to our homeland. For my children Utah is the land of milk and honey, a Willy Wonka-esque existence of eternal grandparent candy and attention, where the urinals flow with ambrosia and nobody ever raises their voice. They talk about “those East Coasters” with a lilt of disdain despite the fact that they themselves are, in fact, born and raised East Coasters (kind of the flip side of those lifelong Utahns who say they’re “from” the cool state they lived in for a few years as a kid while their parents were in graduate school). As of now we feel that we are where we need to be right now, but we’ve thought through the pros and cons many times.
Con: Housing Affordability
Dear Utahns, this is insane. You can’t all be doctors, but apparently you are given how much you are willing to pay for houses. According to one report Utah has the third most unaffordable housing market relative to average income, behind only Hawaii and California. My inner Scrooge comes out with people who live in Utah and gripe about Utah and how wherever they came from is so much more sophisticated and cool. THEN LEAVE AND DECREASE THE SURPLUS POPULATION!
However…
Pro: YIMBY (“Yes in my Backyard”)
Utah is good about allowing growth to meet the demand for housing. I live in the capital of NIMBY-ism where regulations are used to stop any kind of development, making blue collar workers commute multiple hours every day. Eventually I assume the stock of housing in Utah will increase to meet the demand, which is more than I can say for a lot of other areas in the US.
Pro: The Beautiful Mountains
This one isn’t much of a pro for me. Having been raised in Utah, I’m kind of used to the mountains (although I’m surprised at how many lifelong Utahns haven’t been above timberline, which is a whole other kind of beauty altogether). And besides, every place has its beauty: the big skies and windswept plains of Kansas, the murals of Philadelphia, the bright natural green and salty air of the East Coast. I have trees in my backyard that are taller and more elegant than almost any of the trees in Utah. That’s not to dismiss the Utah scenery, but to laud the diverse beauties in our country.
Con: Judgment
Old adages about Mormons being like manure (great when spread out, bad when concentrated in one place) aside, this one isn’t as big as it used to be. Objectively, Utah just isn’t as Latter-day Saint as it was, everybody has a family member who has left the Church, and people don’t have time for projects. In many ways the sacred canopy of Utah Mormonism has been punctured. Still, there is still something to the vibes you naturally get when there are a lot of people from one group concentrated in an area, it could hardly be otherwise even with the best of intentions. My wife pointed out that in non-Mormon Corridor land it’s easier for people that leave the Church to come back as if nothing happened: “Brother Smith, we haven’t seen you in years! Can you substitute primary?”
Con: Career Advancement
Depending on the occupation, there may be career benefits to being closer to larger cities. While remote work is changing this to some extent, there are still particular jobs that just don’t exist in Utah.
Pro: Efficient Government
Utah provides a great bang for your tax buck. There are numerous clean parks, the schools are pretty good, and the traffic lights always work. Not to get political, but there are certain deep blue states with high taxes where libraries close early because people don’t show up for work, and my children were required to bring their own toilet paper to school. Driving from Southwest Colorado to Utah we were surprised at how quickly the ice disappeared from the road once we passed the “Welcome to Utah” sign.
Pro/Con: Strong Church Programs
This is a double edged sword. I’ve spoken about this in-depth in another post; while it’s great to have a lot of direct support, so too are there advantages to your kids to having real, this-won’t-get-done-without-you responsibilities early on.
Pro/Con: Fellow Members for Kids to Hang out With
This one is also ambiguous. Peer influence is real, and while it would be great to have a phalanx of strong member-friends, there are problems when those are the only people your kids interact with, and they don’t have as much of a chance for them to figure out their own discipleship on their own. Plus membership becomes less of a distinctive behavioral marker when everybody else is too. (the “I can’t, I’m a Latter-day Saint” line doesn’t work as much as in Utah). Ideological diversity, and not just racial diversity, is good
Plus, as the father of soon-to-be eight sons, where their budding interests are vectored is important. I remember what it was like to be a hormonal heterosexual teenage male going to church, and let’s be honest, a lot of male churchiness at that stage is to appeal to a certain kind of wholesome churchy female, and there is more of that for my kids in areas with more members. I want my kid’s hormones to be vectored in trying to improve themselves to appeal to said women, and not furry choking porn or whatever the kids these days are into.
Pro/Con: Racial and Ethnic Diversity
People often guffaw at Utah for not being diverse, and yes, it does not have a lot of Black people, but there are other racial and ethnic groups. I don’t ever think I’ve spoken to a non-Hawaiian Pacific Islander outside of Utah, and Utah has a vibrant Hispanic and refugee community, so pro/con in the sense that it’s diverse and not diverse.
Pro: Missionary Work
Member missionary work is much less awkward and more feasible in a non-Utah context. In Utah we assume (rightly or wrongly) that everyone has already been pitched, so it’s hard to know what to do.
Pro: Food Scene
This one has exploded since I left. Every other neighborhood there’s some shiny new food establishment with a really creative take on this or that cuisine. Every time we visit Utah we gorge on the Mexican food that’s lacking on the East Coast.
Pro: No Pests
There isn’t enough water here to support large populations of mice, cockroaches, or black mold, but it also isn’t so much of a desert that you have to worry about waking up to scorpions on your driveway like our Arizona compatriots do.
Con: Dryness, Allergies
I distinctly remember when, visiting Florida for the first time, I had the unique experience of breathing through my nose comfortably. Being raised with dryness and sage I just thought that uncomfortable sinuses were a part of life. For those of us whose ancestors evolved in cold, wet, cloudy northern Europe the bright, dry, sun and dust of Utah doesn’t always sit so well with us.
Pro: Outdoor Activities
When I first left Utah and was planning scout activities I remember being surprised that there weren’t any rock climbing spots within hours of our Philadelphia ward. I was so clueless I thought everybody lived 30 minutes away from great rock climbing; sometimes we take the outdoors scene in Utah for granted.
Insular
This is a classic Utah complaint, but I don’t think this is really a thing anymore. The Internet has flattened the world and homogenized much of our culture.
Pro: Free-Range Parenting
In Utah people are more relaxed about letting kids be kids, whereas in some other places the minimum age for letting children play by themselves is ridiculously high.
Con: Pollution
Inversions can be hard both psychologically and physically, especially for people with asthma.
Con: Latter-day Saint Influencers
In Utah there are a series of Latter-day Saint adjacent institutions that wield sociocultural influence in their own right: Deseret Book, this or that ex-Mo podcast, etc. It’s kind of nice to just not care about this or that influencer and to let the Church just be your Church.
I’ve never lived in Utah except as a student, but I visit every so often (and I’m currently looking out the window at it now). If you convert all the weighted positives/negatives from a multidimensional vector to a scalar, I’d rank Utah higher than most of the places I’ve lived on the basis of natural beauty/outdoor opportunities, reasonable weather/infrequency of natural disasters, functional government/culture vs. dysfunction, and local distinctiveness vs. generic blandness. While not perfect by every measure, I can see why a lot of people want to live here.
In 1993 or 4, I taught a Priesthood lesson–straight from the manual–that explicitly discouraged members from moving to Utah. It was particularly awkward because we had one quorum member who had already announced his intention to do so in the near term. He made no apologies, moved anyway, and returned to the ward a few years later.
I lived my first 31 years in California. I’ve now lived in Utah for 31 years. I miss California sometimes–but I love Utah. Utah is the best state in the U.S. IMO.
Lived there for undergrad some four decades ago or so; I loved living on campus in Provo, and have visited Happy Valley and SLC a time or two since, and hope to visit again to do some historical research in unparalleled archives. The area wasn’t too bad in the 80’s but now there are ghastly too many people there. I-15 is insane (and yes, I have driven extensively in Los Angeles and Denver and Chicago). The overuse of the water resources is insane. I possess zero interest in adding to the crowds. Nope. Nuh-uh. Moreover, 4 years in Los Angeles taught me to avoid any place with a significant faultline. No thank you on the threat of an earthquake. (that’s a total deal killer, right there.)
I’m just 3rd generation LDS with Midwest convert roots, and have only a sibling out there in Utah, so there’s not really a family pull to the area, either. Though it is certainly not “Green Acres,” I say give me my great big multi-mile rolling cornfield view from my back patio on the edge of a major Plains state university town, just 55 minutes from a beautiful temple, over the sprawl of Utah in the I-15 corridor any day of the week.
. . . No pests? We are currently experiencing a plague of grasshoppers. Granted, they’re not as poisonous as scorpions, but it is really unpleasant when the ground ripples and crunches as you walk, and they’ve eaten half the vegetation down to bare sticks.
Yeah, not a fan of the pollution, but that’s as much geography as it is human causes – there are records of black smoke hovering for days or weeks over the valleys back when it was only Native Americans and trappers in my area. I prefer the dryness to the soupy air of Florida or Georgia, but then, I’m of pioneer stock; we’ve had a while to get used to it.
I would not encourage more people to move here, mostly on the basis that we are a high desert, and our water supply is being massively overtaxed by the new move-ins. There are plenty of things we could do as a state to help with that, and some things are in fact in the works, but the fact remains that we’re set to run dry sooner than later if so many people keep moving here.
Also, my valley is being overrun by people fleeing blue states, and while I can’t blame them, many bring a real unpleasant attitude with them. If you liked it so much where you lived, why did you move here – to complain about the locals? Stop moving here from California and New York and buying houses at insane prices – you’re making housing absolutely unattainable for us blue collar workers (there are other reasons housing is expensive, but that’s a big one in our area). And then you’re rude and condescending to boot!
Assuming that there’s ‘no diversity’ in our small town is also annoying. Literally half my neighborhood is Hispanic, including our next-door neighbors; we have Mennonites and several refugee families from various parts of Africa and the Middle East as well, and we all get along just fine. We have a Spanish and a Polynesian ward and a Chinese branch in a single stake – what in the world are you griping about? And why are you judging diversity on skin color or ethnicity exclusively anyway?
Coffinberry – as someone who currently lives viewing distance from the San Andreas, your comment made me laugh. Earthquakes are a giant Meh (which I say even though I happened to be in the Bay Area in 89, although better not to have a repeat of that one). It’s the fires that I find scary (also veiwing distance).
E.C. – Out of curiosity, how integrated is your community? Does your personal friend group match the demographics of your town? That’s the thing about diversity that interests me. My town is something like 65% hispanic. Most people are super integrated, especially the kids. My high schooler’s friend group is very non-white and not a single one of my kids has ever dated another white person in high school. Both for myself and the rest of my family, our co-workers/friends/acquaintances are primarily non-white. The only place in my life this isn’t true is church. I’ve also notice that the active church kids all stick together, pulling non-LDS white kids into their friend group. I know where my sister lives in Utah, the entire town is very white as is her kids’ school, so the population is self-segregating by race/wealth. Is that true of your small town too? I find it all interesting.
1. Real estate prices are going to remain inflated. Reason: outside investment due to the Olympics.
2. You will not see the mountains. Reason: property development, rapidly growing population and pollution.
3. Efficient government? Even Mussolini made the trains run on time. Sort of.
4. Fellow members for your kids? I can’t count the number of expats who have returned to Utah and their kids have left the Church.
5. Missionary work? Brother, the population of active LDS in Utah is declining.
6. The Utah outdoors is being loved to death.
7. Free Range Parenting? Have you been to Utah lately?
If the numbers are relatively even, stay where you are at.
E.C.: Ah yes, I forgot about the crickets. Mormon Crickets’ guts making the roads slick makes for some scary driving.
I’ve noticed a distinct increase in diversity since I left (which to be clear, is good, minus the congestion). For a while Utah was a well kept secret, but the secret’s out and gentiles have found us. I think the segregation ReTx is referring to is real; I’m sure Census numbers confirm as much.
Old Man: Yes, anecdotally in my experience at least the return-to-Utah-leave-the-Church pattern appears to be a thing.
Coffinberry: You make another good “con” point here: the problem of the commons. Utah just doesn’t have the water resources to support a huge population, unless they become like the Las Vegans and replace their lawns with rock gardens, and we all know that’s not going to happen.
Last Lemming: That’s interesting, I knew that the Church vaguely encouraged people to stay in their homelands but I didn’t know it was actually in any manuals.
@ ReTx,
My close friend group is very small – about three, honestly; I’m very introverted. Two are white (one emigrated from Germany), one mixed-race. My acquaintances pretty much map onto the neighborhood demographics; I have friends who came from Nepal for college, many Hispanic friends, and several Polynesian and Chinese and African American acquaintances. It helps that my dad’s really good about welcoming new people to the neighborhood; I meet a lot of people.
Our neighborhood is close to a university, so the population is extremely transient, which doesn’t help in forming deep friendships, but the Mexicans tend to settle in, and the Polynesians have been around for generations. I’ve been to neighbors’ quinceaneras, luaus, birthday parties, etc. where my family were almost the only white people there.
Our town is pretty good about putting on interfaith activities, so I’ve gotten to know a lot of Episcopalian, Protestant, and Catholic friends over the years as well.
@ Stephen C.,
It’s not the Mormon crickets this year, it’s about five different varieties of grasshopper. I fear the crickets may also come through in a wave, though; it seems like that kind of year. Bleah.
E.C. – Your town sounds great. I have this theory that small towns like yours (and mine) don’t end up segregating as much because everyone interacts so much more on an individual basis than in large towns/cities.
Paying people to stop growing alfalfa would do far more for Utah’s water shortage than having them turn their lawns into rock gardens. Still, this second option is desirable and, with time, inevitable. Existing homes would have to be grandfathered, at least for a time.
Career advancement truly is a “con”
In Utah. You’ll statistically not see career advancement as a female, or if you don’t have nepotism on your side, or if you aren’t “in” with the clique. I’ve never seen a state where workers are so overqualified and underutilized- and underpaid. People sacrifice a lot to stay with family and live in Zion.
@ ideasnstuff,
No. Lawns are the biggest waste of water in the entire US; the alfalfa feeds useful livestock, whereas the lawns are watered, often chemically fed, then cut, with no benefit except a few degrees of temperature modification that would just as well be achieved by more useful plants such as vegetables, trees, or drought-tolerant meadow mixes.
I don’t like poorly xeriscaped rock ‘lawns’ at all, but there are literally a thousand different ways to create a garden that doesn’t involve vast expanses of lawn. You can have a beautiful (and pollinator-friendly) garden without wasting water on a lawn.
Additionally, most farmers go to school these days to learn how to most efficiently use every drop of water, and the tech they use allows them to precisely control their water usage.
Eating up farmland with new developments will not save water; it will simply make it so there’s less locally grown food available. In the event of an earthquake or other natural disaster, that means more dependence on highways through the mountains that may or may not be passable.
Also, developers have been building on a flood plain that used to be fields in my area. The farmers knew that and could mitigate the effects, but the developers don’t tell their homebuyers. In any year where precipitation is slightly above average, every house situated there floods, and people who didn’t know don’t have flood insurance to cover damages. That area ought to have stayed fields.
The amount of water used to grow alfalfa and hay in Utah dwarfs that used for lawns and gardens in municipalities. From the figures I have been able to find from seemingly reputable sources, alfalfa hay cultivation takes about 65% of all water diverted in Utah, while lawns/gardens account for about 1/10th of that. I do understand that we are not talking about mere volumes here, but whether waste is involved. Individual lawn and garden watering is undoubtedly wasteful, accounting for something like 75% of all municipal use, and in most cases does not achieve a great public good. The need and inevitability of reducing such use is clear, but even if we could cut such use in half, we would be reducing the percentage of water diverted to private watering from something like 6% to something like 3% of the total.
Water used to cultivate alfalfa and hay, admittedly, has a clear economic use and is not inherently wasteful, as it provides a livelihood to farmers as well as providing feed for livestock, as you point out. But a significant portion of Utah’s alfalfa crop is exported to other states and nations, including to China. We pay a huge cost in water consumption to maintain a relatively small sector of our economy, only part of which is needed to meet local needs. For now it all works. We are not running out of water yet. But when push comes to shove with a growing population, we may have to decide whether we can meet our water needs only at the margins, by reducing wasteful lawn watering, or at the core by using half of our water or less to grow animal feed rather the two-thirds we use now.