As a former member, I still choose to live here over anywhere else (my employer has given us the option - and I can't imagine a place I'd rather live) I'll agree that the church's focus on hard work, clean living, family atmosphere, abstinence from drugs and alcohol provide quite a net-positive for industrious people. I feel completely energized by the tech scene here, but I do get concerned that if we keep trying to rush toward being SF, we'll end up with million dollar 3 bedroom homes and folks living on the streets.
We have a huge advantage over SF in that we actually let developers build more housing (and also have plenty of space to build more) Im always so confused when I go to the Bay area and realize the density is much less than Utah.
While I see people pushing more and more down into American Fork, Lindon, etc I find it strange that they rarely push North. Pluralsight was in Station Park in Farmington, but I believe they've also moved to Provo.
I think the question is more, "why not set up in the northern part of Salt Lake valley to be able to pull in people from Davis/Weber county?"
There is certainly plenty of people that live up there, seemingly just as many as live in Utah County. Is it that there is a dearth of them that have the skills tech companies are looking for? Are there governmental/policy reasons keeping companies away? Is it because BYU is in Utah County and WSU/USU are that much worse at providing potential hires than BYU/UVU are?
I don't know the reason but it does seem weird to me that there is so much push into Utah County and seemingly nothing to the north.
While I did sincerely consider putting a "(more)" in my statement, our level of homelessness comes nowhere near SF or LA. Not that I don't consider it an issue.
