In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

82 T he June 20, 1955, issue of Life magazine tells an important story about Las Vegas. On its cover was an image of two African-American showgirls performing at the Moulin Rouge, the city’s first officially integrated casino-resort. Although this was a significant event at a time when racism was rampant, more significant for today’s Las Vegas is the caption just above the dancers: “Las Vegas—Is Boom Overextended?” The article inside depicted escalation in resort construction and questioned the sustainability of such rapid growth.1 More recent prognosticators have perpetuated the notion that Las Vegas could not possibly grow any more. In the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, for example, many skeptics and commentators assumed that the shortterm lull in air travel and tourism traffic around the world would have a longterm impact on Las Vegas visitation. The proliferation of gambling across the country has produced a similar argument. As far back as the opening of the first casinos in Atlantic City, the argument was made that the closer legalized gambling comes to people around the United States and the world, the less “need” they will have to patronize casino-resorts on the Las Vegas Strip. Critics also speak out against Las Vegas from an environmental perspective. The editors of Fast Company, a business trade magazine, asserted that the desert metropolis is one of the world’s “Too-Fast Cities,” an “environmental pileup in the making.” The editors further wondered: “Can the casinos find enough water to fill all those pools?” In response, Patricia Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said, “Twenty years ago we were answering the same question. . . . This is cyclical. Every two or three years, somebody says Las Vegas is going to run out of water.”2 For decades, Vegas boosters, such as Mulroy, have countered the critics’ attacks by invoking such failed predictions as they point to the city’s continuing prosperity. They have a point. It is nearly impossible, for example, to read the 1955 prediction of “high-pitched optimism” without chuckling when one considers what the Strip has become since then. But, more than a tool for C H A P T E R FOUR Getting Along with Growth Getting Along with Growth 83 boosters or an example of historical hindsight, the failure of these prophecies is a good example of the city’s character. Perpetual and spectacular growth lies close to the Las Vegas soul. Rare indeed is the conversation about the city in which the topic of growth is not mentioned. The subject emerged nearly sixty different times when I talked with locals, and usually the interviewee addressed it spontaneously (i.e., without specific questions from me). Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani said the city’s growing pains are the biggest challenges facing the community: “I found [this concern] going door do door. We asked open-ended questions: ‘What is your number one concern? What is your number two concern?’ And we would just let them talk. In most cases it was growth and traffic.” Former city of Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman concurred when I asked him about challenges facing the city. He said, “I think it’s the rapid growth. We have problems of sustainability. . . . It’s the roads, the traffic, the air, the mental health, the schools.” Vegas, of course, shares the trait of rampant growth with Southern California , Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City, and other Sunbelt cities in the South and West. When I brought this up in my conversation with Mayor Goodman, he responded: “Yes, but [the problems of growth have] accelerated themselves here. It took a long time for Los Angeles to become congested. It happened overnight in Las Vegas.” Since almost everything written about the city in the last few decades has addressed some aspect of that growth (further emphasizing it as an important part of the city’s character) a rehash of those analyses and conclusions serves no purpose. Instead, my analysis focuses on the unique aspects of growth in Southern Nevada, through statistics and maps of growth, impressions of its impact from the local perspective, and illustrations of success and struggle that follow rapid expansion. statistics, maps, and memories In the boom years, six to eight thousand people moved to Las Vegas each month. So said the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, which records the number of new drivers’ licenses within the metropolis. This statistic is impressive but somewhat misleading since it...

Share