Paper short abstract:

My research reveals the production of legitimacy through diverse temporalities in an unlikely site for sustainable design: a massive master-planned community in the American West spearheaded by a mining company and developed with equal parts attention to sustainable suburbanism and Mormon values.

Paper long abstract:

My current book project draws on five years of fieldwork in an unlikely site for sustainable design: a massive master-planned community in the American West spearheaded by one the largest mining conglomerates in the world and developed with equal parts attention to sustainable suburbanism and Mormon values. Now 15 years into an anticipated 30-year build out on remediated mining lands, the suburb in which the project is located is one of the fastest growing U.S. cities and has become an object lesson in sustainable development in politically conservative areas of the American West, including for its award-wining advanced stormwater retention system that integrates landscape architecture, infrastructural design, and earthquake preparedness. My research sheds light on the generative power of diverse temporalities amid this long-term build-out, as architects, mining officials, planning non-profits, builders, municipal workers, residents, marketers, master gardeners, and politicians negotiate aspirations for—and anxieties about—the material, social, aesthetic, and environmental future of the American suburb. My ethnographic observations and interviews provide rich material through which to theorize the production of expertise and legitimacy in contexts where environmental skepticism looms large and where sacred spaces and religious historical figures figure prominently in the material and discursive strategies of designers, planners, and politicians. Discussion topics drawn from mining company executives contemplating post-extraction land use; planning professionals proposing models for the future of a sprawling valley; marketers timing the build-out of high-density housing in suburban areas accustomed to the converse; and religious faithfuls noting the timeless sacredness of the land.