This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

With downtown facilities overflowing, Salt Lake City is pursuing a forward-thinking and important goal to de-concentrate poverty and reduce homelessness.

The announcement of four new and smaller facilities to replace the current Road Home shelter in the crime-ridden Rio Grande area has raised valid concerns, and each location should be carefully evaluated, but ultimately it is the right general approach. Dispersing services geographically into resource centers will help weave our most vulnerable citizens back into the community where their needs can be better met.

Along with the well-known concerns about crime and property values — which the city has promised to address — we would be wise to consider another concern, which has not been considered much in public discourse: design.

Fears about replicating "more of the same problems" in other neighborhoods are not unfounded, given the current tent city and drug dealing around Rio Grande and Pioneer Park. Reducing crime and ensuring the "holistic" approach that the city has promised is the real challenge. This challenge unfortunately will be compounded, not reduced, by the proposed designs for the buildings, which look more like science labs or the corporate glass boxes along the smoggy I-15 corridor than residential buildings that belong in our fine city. The glamour of these shiny buildings will quickly fade, just as their counterparts from the last several decades.

Like other recent buildings, these proposed designs masquerade as new and innovative. In fact there is nothing novel about them. They follow the same recycled ideas that have failed to create enduring communities and improve property values in the long term so many times before.

The city has promised that the solution to homelessness will be different than what we have now, but new over-scaled warehouses are no different from the current over-scaled warehouse, no matter how twisted and bizarre the windows are shaped. Why do we think it is acceptable to impose this experimental architecture on the homeless, our citizens with the least political power? Because they are too weak to complain? As others have pointed out, any one of us could be homeless with a few turns of fate. Would we feel comfortable living in buildings like this?

Instead of experimenting, we could look to buildings that have stood the test of time and ask ourselves, "What are the design principles that created those buildings that we love, the buildings that seem to get better with age?"

This is not nostalgia for a "golden age" or a romantic longing for the past. It is a principle-based approach to design that is grounded in reason rather than fashion. Buildings require too many resources to be the subject of research and development. This is public money for a long-term investment. In public preference studies around the country, traditional architecture is consistently favored over what modernist architects concoct to impress each other.

Successful urban buildings are scaled to the person strolling on the street rather than the automobile cruising on the highway. They are durable and rational structures built to last with enduring materials, not impractical and expensive contortions of metal panels and glass.

Bottom line: A building to house people should look like a building to house people.

Authors are the Institute for Classical Architecture and Art, Utah Chapter, board of directors: Paul Monson, president; Catherine Lay, vice president; Brandon Ro, secretary; Steve Goodwin, Jeff Cobabe, Joseph Brickey, Karla Nielson, Rita Wright and Niki Covington.