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What city does this describe? It is a state capital where immigration is a big issue. It expects to grow by 1 million people over the next 20 years, so expanding mass transit is a key topic.

That describes both Nashville and Salt Lake City. So 120 leaders from Nashville — the mayor, business leaders, transit directors, educators, government officials and others — are visiting Salt Lake City to study how it is handling issues both cities face.

"There are some things you all are doing in Salt Lake City that we can learn from, things like Envision Utah and your transit strategies. Yesterday, we spent a lot of time on the Utah Compact because immigration is an important economic-development issue for us," said Nashville Chamber of Commerce CEO Ralph Schulz.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean added, "Salt Lake City is a hot place right now" to visit because it is often seen as a national model on such issues as immigration and transit.

The Nashville Chamber has been making such annual trips to visit and learn from other cities for 25 years. In recent years, it visited Vancouver, Toronto, Portland, Denver and Miami.

"Salt Lake City was on the top of a lot of people's list as a city we needed to visit because there is a sense of a dynamic economy, similar size to Nashville, a state capital, universities. One of our major issues is transit. You have been a model on the work you have done in that area," Dean said.

In fact, the group scheduled an extra day to focus just on transit on Wednesday.

Since they arrived Sunday, they have heard from more than 50 local leaders on issues including immigration, homelessness, education, transportation and regional planning — including hearing from Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, Utah Transit Authority President Michael Allegra and Utah Department of Transportation Executive Director Carlos Braceras.

"Transit is on the top of everyone's mind as something we need to get our arms around," said Dean. Nashville has a bus system, but is looking at possibly adding train systems as the area around Nashville is projected to grow by 1 million people in the next 20 years.

"We've all been impressed by the transit here," he said, noting the group rode TRAX from the Grand America Hotel where they are staying for meetings at the University of Utah.

Shulz said, "The wide streets, the cleanliness and the friendliness of the community are a big deal [in Salt Lake City]. But the way transit works feels like a really integrated form of transportation in the community. Nashville is just beginning the process of building rapid mass transit," and could learn from the system here.

Schulz also said the group was especially impressed with Envision Utah's method of using polls and involving the community in regional plans.

"Envision Utah is a great community engagement process," he said. "We're going to be pretty serious about digging further into that process."

He said Nashville leaders like the way that business and government work together on issues in Utah, including on immigration and transportation.

"One big theme we're carrying with us out of here is how the discussions always seem to start with 'What's our common ground.' That's helpful to us as we look at how we build support for big ideas back in Nashville," Schulz said.

Becker said local leaders are "happy to share what we've learned in our work to make Salt Lake City the best place in the country to live, work and play." He said it's also a great opportunity to learn from Nashville.