Michelle Knight didn't used to have to worry about rush hour in Clinton, where she lived next to farm fields and open land. But these days, the number of cars in Clinton — the result of the masses of people who moved there to be close enough to commute to Salt Lake City but still be far enough away to enjoy the countryside — is giving her a headache.

"There are a lot more homes and a lot more traffic," says Knight, a 21-year resident of Clinton. "It's not just a little farming community anymore. When we moved here, it was a small-town atmosphere. Now we have Wal-Mart, food establishments. There isn't any space in between us and the next city. ... There are either homes or businesses on pretty much everything, or there will be."

Transportation is an issue for a growing area like the Wasatch Front, Lang says, but how transportation is planned in this part of Utah is also a key element to shaping development and economic stability.

Megapolitan areas are defined in part by the amount of residents who commute from smaller regions to larger anchor cities, and vice versa, Lang says. Megapolitan regions are also projected to have astronomical growth rates in population, which could potentially push urban sprawl farther into deserts and farmland, resulting in more people commuting from longer distances. Planning mass transportation options around travel corridors is a way to preserve rural areas from becoming more dense, Lang says.

"Some of the famous cases of cities that develop rail, like Arlington, Va., did so to preserve single-family homes," Lang said. "Higher-density pressures were spilling out and were flowing into places like neighborhoods, so they said, 'Forget all of that. We'll give you one zone to develop in, but everything else will be preserved."'

Some cities might not readily want to build mass transportation systems, like FrontRunner and TRAX, through town, but Lang says those systems can be a gateway to promising economic opportunities.

"Anything that is a station that has access back to a good hub airport like Salt Lake International Airport has value you cannot believe, just because it means you can be in the national economy, flying around, meeting clients, yet coming back to a pretty remote place," Lang said. "Even if it's not to a large lot in a remote place."

'Whole different world'

For years, Donald Frame's neighborhood was reminiscent of the real wild, wild West. Everyone had a garden, and sheep frequently wandered up and down the road at night to keep the weeds down.

"It was mostly rural then, there was nothing urban about it," Frame said. "When we'd go to 3200 West, I thought we were going to fall off the end of the world, and you know how many people are there now. That far west, back then, it seemed like you were out on the frontier."