And navigate might make me biased but I’ve travelled enough to form a relatively educated opinion.
I do not like driving in slc, it sucks, they don’t let you turn left so you always have to drive in giant circles of right hand turns to get to where you’re going. There’s nowhere to park that is anywhere near where you want to go so that is always crappy. The stupid trax gums up downtown half the time making it worse but it also makes it worse all over the valley.
The timing of the lights makes it so that you pretty much have to stop at every single one no matter which direction you’re driving.
It is infested with homeless and vagrants and you cannot walk around without being panhandled almost constantly.
And yes other cities have all of those same problems but they also have things that offset them for me, there isn’t much in slc that offsets the problems enough for me to not mind the problems so much.
Overall it simply doesn’t have enough positive stuff to attract me and make me want to deal with the disadvantages of visiting it regularly. Other cities do, it doesn’t.
I also grew up in NorCal, San Jose to be precise, and also lived in Chicago and Las Vegas at various times. Salt lake is worse than either of those places.