Las Vegas Faces Opportunity to Stop Sprawl

“At 5,046 residents per square mile, the City of Las Vegas is not exactly Hoboken, but it’s denser than you'd imagine,” writes Josh Stephens in the California Planning & Development Report. “It has plenty of small houses on small lots (making it relatively inexpensive on a per-unit basis), and it has its share of small apartment buildings. Many residents commute to one of the greatest concentrations of employment (especially blue-collar employment) in the country: the Las Vegas Strip. So, there are gravitational forces keeping residents in the city.”



“To its credit, Las Vegas wants to grow. It wants none of the slow-growth paralysis that has hobbled too many parts of California. Unfortunately, Lombardo's plea indicates that he wants Las Vegas to continue to sprawl, presumably by continuing to build inexpensive single-family homes, parking-heavy apartment complexes, and whatever inconsequential commercial developments are needed to keep suburbanites fed, fit, and fueled up.”



“Gov. Lombardo has said that provision of housing 'begins with eliminating governmental barriers to development.' Sure, but it doesn't have to be the federal government that does the eliminating.”

“Back in 1972, architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steve Izenour famously celebrated Las Vegas’s design sensibilities. They reveled in the superficiality of signage and simulacra. Now, Las Vegas — not the Strip, but the actual city — faces the opportunity to get real.”