Who says residents of one of the nation's fastest-growing areas - southern Utah's Washington County - aren't progressive?

Directors of the planning partnership Vision Dixie aren't giving everything away in advance of Wednesday's unveiling of results from countywide surveys. But it's clear respondents want to break from the cycle of development that has besieged Washington County, spawning more sprawl and more traffic.

Envision Utah's Ted Knowlton, who directed the Dixie project, said residents have been given a voice in the future of their communities.

"They could see that certain strategies had certain benefits."

During the past 18 months, Washington County residents were invited to attend input sessions, respond to an online questionnaire and, in some cases, participate in a scientific poll. The exercise was aimed at guiding the area with 150,000 residents toward a 2035 population of 400,000.

The response was clear: Presented with four scenarios that represented everything from housing tracts with large boulevards and mega-malls on one extreme to walkable communities with more bicycle lanes and neighborhood shops on the other, residents leaned toward the latter.

Whether those broad guidelines translate into specifics at the municipal-planning level will be up to local governments, Knowlton said. "The baton moves to the cities and the county. They control how growth unfolds."

But will Washington County and its municipalities have the political will to implement those guidelines?

"That's the question of the year," Springdale Mayor Pat Cluff said Monday. "I'd like to say we'll all jump on that bandwagon."

Cluff said that her tiny town at the gateway to Zion National Park as well as nearby Rockville and Virgin would embrace the "village atmosphere" suggested by respondents. She was unsure, however, how the county or bigger cities - such as St. George, Washington and others - might respond.

"I can't speak to that," Cluff said.

Nor can Judy Gubler, city manager of Ivins, St. George's upscale neighbor.

Ivins is a community of large single-family dwellings with big yards and is the antithesis of what the majority of survey respondents said they wanted in future planning.

"The Vision Dixie process is the first-ever [wide-scale] planning effort in the county," Gubler said. "And we applaud it." Nonetheless, she wonders if future builders will ask whether it's fair that new development be limited to high-density housing in and around downtown.

"It's the right time [for Vision Dixie] because everybody understands the need for it," she said. "The trick will be the implementation."

csmart@sltrib.com

A new way to grow

Washington County residents favor new planning policies that include:

* Clustering most residential growth within or adjacent to cities.

* Erecting mixed-use villages with shopping, offices, single-family houses and condos.

* Building a new thoroughfare linking east and west St. George.

* Launching light rail and extending bus service from St. George farther into neighboring cities.

Survey results available Wednesday at www.visiondixie.org