A travel article in the Dallas Morning News describes the Las Vegas Strip's recent changes as Las Vegas-style New Urbanism.
According to an article by Michael Hiller, "despite the desert heat, new shops on Las Vegas Boulevard face outward to the sidewalks rather than inside to casino gaming tables. The deck has been shuffled to more broadly appeal to millennials."
Although Downtown Las Vegas, old Las Vegas, incorporated Las Vegas, has been well documented in its Tony Hsieh-led revitalization efforts (although Hsieh still gets a gratuitous mention), we're talking about the Las Vegas Strip here. Nor are we talking about the contrived and starchitect-designed gesture to urbanism attempted by the City Center complex of hotels and shopping destinations.
Hiller lists three new hotels that have "embraced" the millennial attitude—the SLS Las Vegas, for instance, opened last month. At $415 million, the Southern California-inspired hotel is an "over-the-top version of the original SLS in Beverly Hills sports an industrial-chic design from Philippe Starc."
Also getting scant attention in the body of the article but featured as the image in the article's accompanying slideshow is another new addition, Linq—a (deliberately) pedestrian-oriented, ersatz industrial district anchored by the world's largest Ferris wheel.
Read the full story: Las Vegas reinvents itself with young visitors in mind
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