Now that my city’s downtown area is starting to thrive, we’re facing a new problem: the suburbs are trying to “steal” the best parts of downtown and move them to the outskirts. In the last several years, Provo, Utah has dealt with a barrage of attempts to move centrally-located public facilities to unwalkable, suburban (and even undeveloped) areas.

In 2016, the school board moved our downtown high school from a central location with a walkscore of 65 to the edge of suburban development with a walkscore of 3. The move had major consequences for the city and required the creation of new roads and infrastructure. (The old, centrally-located campus is now a parking lot.) Even after the public outcry that followed, we’ve been overwhelmed with similar attempts to relocate public facilities.

Last year, a group advocated to move the City Center (with administrative, municipal, and police departments) from its old home on the city’s main Center Street to the vacant Sears building in a struggling mall on the south end of town. Stopping the proposed move required a significant, months-long investment of time and effort from concerned citizens.

Currently, the Provo School Board is attempting to relocate yet another school, Dixon Middle School, from its central city location to a lot in an undeveloped area of the suburbs. Downtown students who can currently walk or bike to school would have to be bused to the new location or take on a treacherous route that includes a 7-lane intersection, 3 sets of active railroad tracks, and a tunnel under the interstate freeway. Some of these roads do not have developed sidewalks.

Some residents in the suburban area have argued that the situation is only fair. If suburban kids had to be driven to school before, why not require downtown parents to drive their kids now?

However, many families in both the suburbs and the downtown realize that this kind of tit-for-tat thinking is a mistake. Stealing public assets from the downtown isn’t a sustainable way to grow a community. It has lasting consequences that hurt the downtown area and also end up hurting the families in new suburban developments.

The Negative Consequences When the Suburbs "Steal" Services from the City

Here are a few of the outcomes of this "suburban stealing":