West Valley City is beginning the process of outlining its next 20 years. 

A public meeting was held in January to introduce what will be a year to 18-month road to creating a 20-year general plan for the city. 

The plan, which will take West Valley City into the mid to late 2040s, will provide a framework for nearly all aspects of the city’s decision making regarding its future growth and development in everything from its economy, housing, transportation, public safety, city services and more. 

“A general plan is a road map, it’s a blueprint. The best way to think about it is a foundation for decision-making,” said John Houseal, co-founder of Houseal Lavigne, a Chicago-based urban planning firm which West Valley City hired to help it compile the updated general plan for its next generation.

“It will help elected officials make better decisions,” Houseal added. “It’s helpful for residents because residents will know what it is the city is trying to achieve over the next decade or two.”

The introductory meeting in January is the first of many to be held over the coming months to help mold the general plan. “The process will engage the entire community. It will identify the needs, desires and aspirations of the community from broad visionary statements to very, very granular and specific actions on things the city should be doing,” Houseal said. 

He then asked meeting attendees, made up of city residents of just a few years to more than five decades, what they would like to see addressed in the updated master plan for Utah’s second largest city by completing a four-item questionnaire. 

Suggestions ranged, in no particular order, from better transportation routes and public transit, public safety, code enforcement, parks and recreational opportunities, walkability, affordable housing, neighborhood development, preservation of open spaces, and a better image for the city and better representation of the West Valley City’s diverse communities. 

Residents, businesses, property owners, developers and others who have a stake in West Valley City will have additional chances to weigh in on the city’s future course through an online survey. It can be accessed, along with additional information about the general plan process, at www.wvc-ut.gov/450/General-Plan. West Valley City’s current general plan was last updated in 2015. The period since then has seen rapid commercial, industrial and residential growth. 

Houseal said that the new general plan that emerges from the next year and a half has to be produced by West Valley City for West Valley City. “Whatever gets recommended here has to work for West Valley City,” Houseal said. “It can’t be recommended solely because somebody else did it someplace else.”