Salt Lake City's Secret to Escaping the Recession

This article is part of a weeklong America 360 series on Salt Lake City and The New West.

Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker is not your typical Utah politician. For starters, he's a Democrat and a proud progressive in a Red State, the son of a former U.S. ambassador, who grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended a private Episcopal school. Yet, Becker settled in Utah roughly 40 years ago, drawn to the West through summer jobs with the National Park Service. He attended law school at the University of Utah, ran his own planning and consulting business, and then rose through the ranks of the Utah statehouse before assuming office in 2008 as the mayor of Salt Lake City, a burgeoning and increasingly diverse metropolitan area where the city population now clocks in at just under 200,000 residents.