Opinion: Why Utah might be well-positioned to counter hyperpartisanship

I was initially an Olympics naysayer, routinely asking, “What is the point in spending so much on sports?” During the leadup and throughout the 2002 Games, I realized that maybe I’d sold short the Olympics’ upsides. To me, it became transformational, as the sense of community I’d felt was unlike any I’d seen since moving to the state.

Now, I’m a Utah Hockey Club naysayer and cannot wait to be proven wrong again.

In my personal and professional lives, I typically focus on policy, not sports. In the professional realm, my team at the Utah Foundation recently released its first report from the Utah Priorities Project . This series aims to understand “what matters most” to Utahns.

Partisan politics is near the top of the list of what matters most in 2024. In the Utah Foundation’s open-ended preliminary survey , respondents expressed frustration with political extremism, how political opponents press their agendas, the lack of compromise and the increasingly divisive nature of a two-party system.

But how can you alleviate these divisions? Perhaps by improving our public spaces and, in the meantime, further strengthening community bonds.

I rarely listen to audiobooks, but I recently spent time with one from 2018 called “ Palaces for the People .” It explores how social infrastructure can counter much of what ails us today, including helping to overcome partisan politics. This infrastructure refers not to sewers and roads but to “the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact.” These are buildings such as schools, postsecondary education campuses, libraries, bookstores and cafes. Beyond buildings, social infrastructure includes outdoor public spaces.

An essential aspect of social infrastructure is that it creates “third places,” a term coined by American sociologist Ray Oldenburg . The first and second places — where we spend much of our time — are our homes and workplaces. These third places are those where we can interact with people outside of our immediate groups in a way that helps build community. These places break down personal barriers and partisan division, vastly unlike the echo chambers of social media.

The Utah Foundation recently wrote about a subset of these third places in our Healthy Communities series of reports, which focused on parks and public open spaces. These spaces, such as baseball diamonds, soccer fields, dog parks and trails, are places to expand and improve your communities. They get people into groups and get them outside and active.

In 2023, the governor prompted the Legislature to act on funding the Utah Trail Network , which focuses on connecting existing paved trails. These trails connect existing communities and build new ones. The Network’s whopping $45 million yearly investment in trails and trail connectivity will be a resource for Utahns today and 50 years from now. It will help connect people to places and, just as importantly, connect them with one another.

The Utah Trail Network will not directly act toward reducing partisan politics. However, it should provide spaces for people to walk and bike, chat with one another, wave to each other and perhaps work to erode the barriers that we have constructed around ourselves based on our partisan orientation.

Ultimately, the Utah Trail Network will truly transform our state. We’ll have to wait and see about the Utah Hockey Club.