Las Vegas columnist Scott Dickensheets turns to Tufts planning professor Justin Hollander to ask what Sin City should do to combat plummeting home values and draining population.
Hollander got the call because of his ideas of "smart shrinkage" or "smart decline":
Dickensheets writes, "I'm not so much interested in the broad-strokes aspects of the theory, a lot of which derives from examples in the Rust Belt and Europe. I don't think Las Vegas is quite ready to knock down emptying neighborhoods to turn stucco wastelands into parks, pleasant as that might sound.
I do like smart decline's emphasis on smaller tactics to enhance quality of life: turning acres of undeveloped suburban dirt, empty since the housing flop, into neighborhood amenities by keeping them clean and planting a few trees (shown to improve surrounding property values, by the way)."
FULL STORY: If Las Vegas is in decline, let’s make the most of it
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