Wasatch Choice team unveils city-and-town-center toolkit, plans ‘big 5’ progress dashboard

A new online toolkit and visualization suite aimed at helping Utah communities plan and implement city and town centers was previewed Sept. 11 at a meeting of the Wasatch Front Economic Development District Strategy Committee.

The resource, which regional planners said will be distributed broadly this fall, includes downloadable graphics, scenario sliders and 3-D panoramas intended to help local officials, planning commissions and developers visualize transitions from existing conditions to possible future centers.

"It's a new website with new visual tools and information to support communities in bringing about their centers," said Tim Watkins, a community planner with the Wasatch Front Regional Council, in the presentation. Watkins described four center types used in the Wasatch Choice vision — neighborhood, city, urban and metro — and said the new site provides scenario comparisons, building-height guidance and public-space details for each scale.

Why it matters: committee members said the visuals can make planning conversations easier and help communities that lack dedicated economic-development staff understand realistic options for incremental change. The Wasatch Front Regional Council (WFRC) and partners also said the resource will enable more consistent regional accounting of centers as part of the Wasatch Choice vision updates.

Key takeaways

- Scale and reach: WFRC staff reported the region’s centers inventory grew from 221 in 2023 to nearly 400 in the 2025 update, reflecting new planned or recognized centers across the Wasatch Front and adjacent Mountainland Association of Governments area.

- Funding to implement: staff noted roughly $1.8 million in Transportation and Land Use Connection (TLC) funding awarded to communities to support small-area planning and implementation, and about $810,000 targeted for station-area work.

- Visual tools: the website includes a "slider" showing existing-to-future scenarios, detailed close-ups of public spaces, flexible ground-floor use guidance and downloadable image sets intended for planners and elected officials.

- Supporting metrics: WFRC staff previewed a companion monitoring effort — a compact set of five performance measures, the so‑called “big 5,” intended to be displayed in an interactive dashboard and to be viewable by region, county and city.

Bert Granberg, on behalf of WFRC’s performance monitoring team, described the proposed “big 5” measures: average job opportunities reachable within a typical commute (access to opportunities); percentage of residents within a 10‑minute walk of frequent transit (transportation choices); combined housing-plus-transportation cost (affordability); percent of residents within a 10‑minute walk of parks, trailheads or public spaces (park availability); and share of jobs and homes located in identified centers (centers strength).

"We want a small set [of metrics] that people can understand, and that can be shown at city and region levels," Granberg said. He told the committee the WFRC team expects to publish the big-5 dashboard later this year and to add secondary metrics (including economic-development indicators) in a phase 2.

Committee reaction and next steps

Elected officials and planners on the call praised the resource and urged broad outreach. "It looks like a great resource — we'd be happy to help on the implementation side," said Commissioner Chris Roybal, who asked staff about coordinating outreach with cities that lack full-time economic-development staff.

WFRC staff said they plan distribution at several fall conferences (Utah League of Cities and Towns, Utah Land Use Institute and APA) and will follow up with local chambers, economic-development organizations and municipal staffs. A short webinar from September 2024 is already linked on the new site; additional explainer video material was described as forthcoming.

WFRC staff emphasized the visuals were developed after surveying planners statewide (about 80 responses) and working with a mixed‑use centers advisory committee to ensure the resources are useful for urban and smaller communities alike.

A WFRC preview of the website also noted planned additions showing fiscal and infrastructure benefits of centers, including comparative property- and sales-tax revenues per acre, infrastructure cost per housing unit, outdoor-water‑use efficiency and health-related activity metrics tied to walkable places.

Ending

WFRC staff said the toolkit and the big-5 dashboard are intended to be practical, implementable tools for local governments. The website and support materials will be pushed publicly this fall; staff invited committee members to request follow-up briefings or to coordinate presentations at local and regional events.