Founded '97
In 1997, a group of concerned community, government, and business leaders came together to form Envision Utah, a nonprofit that engages Utahns in collaborative, bottom-up decision making.
Who We Are
From our Founding Board to our current Board Members, Envision Utah is grateful for the ongoing support and dedication of the individuals and leaders, without whom we couldn’t do what we do.
Our Team
We are committed to helping Utahns plan their vision for the future and make it a reality. Together we're making sure that our state remains an amazing place to live—now and in the future.
Engage • Create • Implement
To understand Utahns' hopes for the future, we engage residents through values research, surveys, workshops and mapping exercises, interviews, and many other public outreach methods. We take that baseline knowledge of what Utahns value and work with the public, experts, and other stakeholders to create voluntary, locally-implemented, market-based solutions to achieve the future Utahns want.
How We Do It
With an innovative and uniquely Utahn approach to addressing growth-related issues, the Envision Utah process has been praised and emulated in growing regions throughout the country. Our bottom-up, nonpartisan, collaborative decision-making process engages the public through interviews, mapping exercises, surveys, and other means to develop and implement a vision for the future. Read more about the five-step process below.
Utahns’ values
Each of our visioning projects starts and builds upon the foundation of what Utahns want for their future.
Stakeholders
We seek the input and participation from local stakeholders with a wide range of experiences to provide feedback and empower the community to explore how growth could occur.
scenarios
With the input of our stakeholders and the analysis of our research, we create scenarios for what the future could be depending on the choices we make.
public input
We present the scenarios to the public through interviews, mapping exercises, workshops, surveys, to figure out which scenario Utahns want to create in the future.
The vision
We take the public’s input and preferred scenario to create a vision – a roadmap – for the future, with goals and strategies for implementation.
There is a strategic vision for Utah's future
In 2013, Envision Utah—with the help of Governor Gary Herbert—set out to engage Utahns in an unprecedented effort to create a statewide vision for the future. We heard 52,000 Utahns tell us what they wanted for the future across 11 key topics, then we worked with stakeholders and experts to create strategies to make Utahns' vision for each topic a reality. Since then, we've been hard at work to help implement the strategies in each topic. Click on the icons below to learn about the vision and the progress we're making toward implementation.
Impacts
Envision Utah doesn’t always take credit for the catalytic influence we have on our stakeholders and their role in the community. They have taken Utahns’ vision for the future and made it foundational to their work—and we’re seeing the results as they implement Your Utah, Your Future strategies.
Transit Oriented Development
Since 2010, over 40 percent of new multifamily housing units have been built within walking distance of a rail station. That means reduced household costs, air emissions, traffic, infrastructure costs, and land consumption.
Tier 3 Fuel
Air quality in Utah is significantly improving. Among other strategies, many of the refineries serving Utah are upgrading to offer lower-emission “tier 3” fuel, builders are improving the energy efficiency of the homes and buildings they construct, and all new water heaters are now required to be ultra low-NOx.
Less Water Usage
Utahns are now using less than 167 gallons of potable water per capita per day—down from 185 in 2010, and 237 in 2000.
