Trading Places: Rethinking infrastructure to support smart growth, Salt Lake City, Utah: 2005 Urban Land Institute Student Competition

"Trading Places" creates a strategy to consolidate inefficient, scattered municipal infrastructure of Salt Lake City Utah. The proposal identifies a former Kennecott mining brownfield site as a new location for municipal services, thereby freeing up lands in the center of Salt Lake for new residential infill. This proposal targets new growth in already-urbanized areas rather than sprawling outwards as Kennecott’s ‘Daybreak’ and other local new urbanist proposals put forth. This promotes a region-wide systems efficiency and avoids the leap-frogging effect of placing new residential development remote from services.

The Kennecott municipal infrastructure site design not only creates a municipal infrastructure campus, it also creates a remediation strategy for cleansing tailings water and reusing mining rock wastes. Kennecott mining operations produce 330,000 tons of waste rock daily. Waste rock is currently dumped into unusable piles at the quarry edges. A potential reuse of waste rock is designed. Berms constructed with waste rock organize the site. The berms limit wind turbulence and channel water through constructed wetlands that cleanse storm water and tailings releases.

In addition, A landfill is created to provide capacity for 30% of Salt Lake CIty trash that currently gets shipped across the state for disposal. Collected methane from the landfill is used for energy production. Air pollution is reduced by limiting the amount of coal burning electric power and stopping the transportation of waste to offsite facilities.

Kate Kennen worked on an interdisciplinary team in 2005 to create this competition entry which received an honorable mention. Team members are listed below.

Design & Planning Team:
Kate Kennen, Master in Landscape Architecture
Cory Schreier, Master in Urban Planning
Audrey Tendell, Master in Urban Planning
Jill Dau, Master in Urban Design and Architecture
Genevieve Bantle, Master in Design Studies

Faculty Adviser: John Beardsley
Professional Adviser: Richard Reynolds, The Reynolds Group, Inc

Awards:
2005 Honorable Mention, Urban Land Institute Student Competition