American planning practices have become synonymous with sprawl and specifically American zoning practices have been known to create more sprawl than their European counterparts. Compact development creates opportunities for more efficient infrastructure, creates less land waste, reduces resource use, and reduces the need to maintain a car for accessibility.
To present a case study, there is a small resort town in Utah, USA called Park City. The town is idyllic, surrounded by mountains and forest, and was a host of the 2002 Winter Olympics, but like other struggling cities, it is dealing with issues like affordable housing and congestion along with classic sprawling spatial planning in much of the developed city.
This thesis will investigate a high level of American verse European planning practices and be followed by an analysis of Park City, Utah’s, social structures surrounding the Land Management Code, presenting it through the lens of the Actor Network Theory to initiate a foundational framework to utilize for future studies comparing development codes of similar international cities.