Vegas Baby!

The first time I went to Vegas, I read in my guide book that it is the fasted growing city in the USA, building one school a month. I feel like that this might have been a typo but when driving through it was way bigger and more sprawling than I had imagined, although I find that a lot when I travel #Beijingblowingmymind.

Anyway, that was a long time ago and this wee article I found very interesting because it's an urban plan that's trying to engage with the community.

The corner stone of this development is a big daddy company coming in and setting up a bit of infrastructure to get the ball rolling. Zappo's CEO Tony Hseih saw this area filled with vacant lots as an opportunity to develop something new.



So much regeneration is on the retarded 'build it and they will come' idea but downtown Vegas is actually engaging with the ideas of Edward Glaeser and Richard Florida to build and retrofit affordable spaces that regular people and businesses can utilise.

I have faith in projects like this, where ground level activities really brings commercial and community spaces together making interesting rounded locality and even editing the patterns of urban spaces.

This article and I diverge at the end. Timothy Pratt suggests that beginning with a community is a challenging way to build a city but I couldn't disagree more. The city is constantly organically growing because if the interaction of it citizens on every level. The reasons cities, or more so city centres, die is people people aren't interacting there. Importing a destination and community is a perfect way to revitalise a city and I'm quite excited to watch how this transpires.

You can watch the progress too here.

Talking about Vegas, I feel like maybe I should have gone as Denise Scott Brown for Halloween. Too much for a hero's and villains party?