As Wealth Inequality Soars, One City Shows the Way
Tom Christopulos steers a black Nissan Armada through the sharply angled streets of Ogden, Utah, a historic metropolis about 35 miles north of Salt Lake City lodged at the base of the towering Wasatch Mountains, dissecting the neighborhoods home by home and crunching the numbers out loud. As part of his drive-by, he canvasses the terrain voraciously, even compulsively, visually cataloguing every detail—a rite he’s performed for nearly a decade. “I know every block in this town, every house,” he says. “See those mansions over there on Jefferson Avenue? They were cut up long ago, turned into rentals—flophouses, really. We bought them up, renovated them and turned them back into single-family homes.”
Born and reared in Ogden, Christopulos has labored for the past eight years as the town’s director of community and economic development, squeezing prosperity—slowly and painstakingly—from abandoned rail yards, slaughterhouses and run-down buildings in an effort to rebuild Ogden’s middle class. “It’s been real pick-and-ax work,” he says.
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