Millcreek became a city in 2016. Before it adopted its own plan, the area followed the Salt Lake County general plan. Millcreek adopted its own General Plan in February 2019. The plan sets 13 future land use categories. It describes each one in an appendix, and each description sits on a different page.
That structure worked against the people who use it. In meeting after meeting, planners stopped to find the right page. They read one category, then turned back for the next. The discussion waited for the paper.
This work took the categories out of the appendix and put them on one map. The map is four feet by six feet, and it hangs on a wall. A room can see every category, its rules, and where it applies, at the same time.
What the plan designates
The map covers 259 areas across 7,717 acres, which is about 12 square miles. It uses the 13 categories the General Plan defines:
- Neighborhood 1, Neighborhood 2, and Neighborhood 3
- City Center, Village Center, and Urban Transit Center
- Mixed Use 1 and Mixed Use 2
- Retail and Office, and Employment and Commercial
- Light Manufacturing
- Public and Quasi-Public
- Conservation Open Space
The categories do not cover equal ground. One neighborhood category covers most of the city.
| Category | Share |
|---|---|
| Neighborhood 1 | 60.5% |
| Conservation Open Space | 11.6% |
| Public and Quasi-Public | 6.1% |
| Neighborhood 3 | 5.6% |
| Neighborhood 2 | 3.7% |
| Mixed Use 1 | 2.4% |
| Retail and Office | 2.3% |
| Employment and Commercial | 1.8% |
| Light Manufacturing | 1.6% |
| Urban Transit Center | 1.2% |
| City Center | 1.1% |
| Village Center | 1.0% |
| Mixed Use 2 | 1.0% |
Please read this table with care. It reports what the 2019 plan designates. It is not a recommendation and it is not a criticism. Millcreek is writing a new General Plan now, and the city is collecting public comment on what residents want the city to be. This work has no influence on those decisions, and it states no opinion on them. For the current process, go to the city.
A guide, not a rule
A future land use map is not a zoning map. Zoning controls what an owner can build today. This map shows what the city expects over the next 10 to 20 years.
The difference matters at the boundary. Category areas follow parcel lines, roads, and other features where they can. Where a category edge does not follow a parcel line, the city sets the real line when the owner asks to rezone or to develop. The Planning Commission and the City Council can read a boundary with some flexibility, if the change still fits the General Plan. The density ranges also describe a whole area, not one parcel.
The data
The map draws from the city future land use dataset. Millcreek publishes that dataset in ArcGIS Online, and anyone can use it. You can explore it on the Millcreek open data site. The city credits the Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center and the Wasatch Front Regional Council as data sources.
The dataset is not fixed. The version published in November 2023 carries four years of changes that the city made by ordinance: land use amendments, text amendments, zoning changes, and changes to the future land use map itself.
The city states the limits of the data. It is mapping grade, not survey grade. Do not use it for a parcel boundary, an appraisal, an engineering design, or a legal description. Millcreek maintains the data, and the data changes.
How it was made
I built the map in 2023, over a winter holiday, while I taught myself Adobe Illustrator and ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud. The General Plan defines the 13 categories. My work was to take them out of the appendix, give them one visual system, and put the geography and the rules in one view.
What the map cannot show
The map does not give a parcel its zoning. It does not promise that a rezone will succeed. It shows the plan the city adopted, and the city can amend that plan.
Recognition
Esri selected the map as a finalist in the Envisioning the Future category of the 2025 User Conference Virtual Map Gallery. You can see the gallery entry on the Esri site.
Sources: the Millcreek General Plan, adopted February 2019, for the land use categories and the boundary rules. The city Future Land Use dataset in ArcGIS Online for the area figures.