Curtis Johnson CURT JOHNSON: Salt Lake City — Here this week to participate in a meeting of the national Alliance for Regional Stewardship (ARS), I find a region reveling in dramatic change. The political map colors Salt Lake City “red”, but enough urban values usually seen as “blue” show up too. That blend colors this place a marvelous merlot.

In less than a decade this region, this charter member of western individualism culture has shifted from a roads-and-cars (lots of trucks) mindset about transportation toward the balance that comes from a sophisticated system of transit. On top of two highly popular light rail lines, the region’s captured a network of 175 miles of existing rail lines interconnecting most of the valley’s cities and employment centers. Polls show 88 percent of people in the region strongly support more investment in rail transit.

And coming out of the valley floor on the southwest edge, which they call the West Bench along the Oquirrh mountains, is “Daybreak.” It’s the brainchild of Kennecott Land (sister to the giant Kennecott Mining company, which has mined copper on 3000 of its 93,000 acres for over 100 years). 40,000 acres on the valley floor are suitable for development and represent possibly the largest development area near a large city in the United States.

Peter McMahon, Kennecott Land’s president told the ARS gathering that Daybreak will be a showcase of sustainability. Like its sister, the mining company, “we’re in the business of taking calculated risks on a large scale. The plan calls for more jobs than houses. Abundant parks and open space. Schools kids can walk to. A real community where offices, restaurants, schools, libraries, and shops are close to each other and to homes. A rail line running through it and connected to the region’s system. Maybe it’s not so big a risk these days. As the National Association of Realtors recently disclosed, these attributes are no longer reserved to the runaway imaginations of planners. According to their survey of recent homebuyers, 62% of the respondents say they’d take rail transit to work if available and and nearly half would chose a mixed-used setting for their housing.

But what makes Daybreak as breathtaking as the rugged mountains that surround this valley is sheer scale. Kennecott has half of all the remaining developable land in the valley. Building a high-quality mixed-use set of communities delivers density as a dividend. Which means Daybreak can house at least 500,000 people or about half of all the projected population growth of the next generation. With homes already appearing, this commitment is the largest demonstration of the New Urbanism principles anywhere.

How did Salt Lake City make this merlot cultural blend? Most people here say today’s pattern is the harvest of hard work done for the past seven years with Envision Utah (EU). While Kennecott mined copper, EU mined the values of people who live here — finding a core commitment to families and social connections, steady prosperity, and security. People said they live here for “peace of mind.” EU engaged thousands of citizens to find out what that meant. New development here no longer seems dragged down by weary arguments over density; here the talk rings of design and quality, in the clear knowledge that things not only need to be closer together to conserve land and preserve natural resources, but that proximity delivers rewards in access and walkability and quality of life.