Las Vegas – A Case of Urban Restructuring

Las Vegas, an erstwhile satellite of Los Angeles in United States is now a thriving metropolis reputed for bringing hyper reality in to every day lives. Like many other cities, Las Vegas too, developed along the rail road lines. Las Vegas metropolitan area which is also known as the Las Vegas valley stretches around 600 square miles. It comes under the Clark county and a part of Nevada state.

Origin

The area was originally occupied by Mormon farmers in 1854 which was taken over by the U.S. Army in 1864. In 1902, major chunk of land was bought by William Clark, a Montana senator from a rancher’s widowed wife. The senator divided the land in to many plots and put them for sale immediately after the construction of the railroad in 1905. Las Vegas became the trans-shipment point and a rail road repair centre and received another boost when the rail road was extended to the silver towns of Bullfrog and Rhyolite. The new residents of the town took the initiative to get water supply for which a syndicate was created called Vegas Artesian Water Syndicate in 1907. This initiative boosted the confidence and commitment of the residents to develop the city even after the withdrawal of the Union Pacific Rail Road from Las Vegas by closing the repair facility. The best option sought by the entrepreneurs of the region was to develop Las Vegas as a tourist resort.

Boundaries

Surrounded by mountains and lakes on all the sides, Las Vegas valley is a major tourist attraction for the world over. It has Spring mountains on the west, Sheep mountains on the north, Muddy mountains, Eldorado Range and Lake Mead on the east and Black mountains on the south. The metropolitan area of Las Vegas includes Boulder city and Blue diamond which share all the services.
The jurisdictional boundaries within the Las Vegas valley include the City of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Unincorporated Clark County, Henderson and Boulder city.

Growth & Development

It is amazing that once a part of Mojave Desert, surrounded by mountains, Las Vegas valley developed in to a metropolitan area with burgeoning economy within a short span of time. As per the Master Plan (2020), Las Vegas has experienced a 73 percent increase in growth in the last ten years thus bringing its current population to nearly 465,000. By 2020, it is expected to increase up to 800, 000.
A major boost to the region came with the construction of Hoover Dam in 1930s, which paved the way for infrastructure development and water and electricity. Dear (2000, p200) identifies a series of events that triggered the growth and expansion of Las Vegas. The first, of course was the federal funding of the Hoover dam or the Boulder dam that transformed this ex-suburb of Los Angeles in to an independent city while still being reliant. The second major trigger was the legalisation of gambling in 1931. Though gambling had been legal in Nevada since 1869, many casinos were closed down due to the 1911 law, which was repealed in 1931. Added to this was the cleaning operation of LA in 1938 of prostitution and gambling, which obviously found their way to Las Vegas. The third trigger was apparently the expansion of highways program that improved all the connections between LA and Las Vegas.
The construction of the city was accompanied by a simultaneous growth in population as well as gambling. Las Vegas had to rely on tourism for its economy especially because of decline in federal funding. The domestic technological industry advanced with making of desert coolers that made the desert stay possible. More workers and soldiers swarmed to the city especially after the World War II, opting for the Sunbelt cities because of building restrictions on those of the Frost Belt. Participation in the war completely shifted the focus of Las Vegas from agriculture and mining to manufacturing and science. The region apparently acquired a magnesium factory which was targeted to produce ten times more than Germany and supply to the factories in LA. Industrial development and subsequent employment opportunities led to the flooding of the city with industrial workers and this led to the emergence of an industrial suburb at Henderson. The region during the war time also acquired an air base and a nuclear testing ground.

Las Vegas and post metropolis

Thus, if one were to look at the emergence and development of Las Vegas, it exactly followed the pattern delineated in the six discourses of post metropolis by Soja (2000, p145-345). The former suburb of Los Angeles, transformed in to an independent metropolis due to industrial development and became a tourist destination. Development of Las Vegas juxtaposes essentially the Exopolis of LA that subsequently ceased to be just the outer city of LA and emerged out as a self reliant metropolis with limited dependence on LA for a few supports like man power, customers and other vital services. It emerged as the other side of LA for the under world economy. Once formed, its development was typical of any other American city with industrialisation leading to population growth and expansion to suburbanization. What makes Las Vegas stand apart from the other cities and cautions the other cities is due to its preoccupation with hyper simulations that became its central spine of activity and made it a tourist destination.
Las Vegas, as said earlier, was notorious mainly for gambling. Originally, in the post war era, gambling was centred in the city’s downtown core called the Fremont Street and there were few casinos along the LA highway. Apparently phenomenal change occurred with the opening of El Rancho, the first lavish motor hotel on Highway 91 in 1941 (Dear, 2000, p201). Subsequently El Rancho emerged as the first themed hotel in Las Vegas and an important landmark building on the Las Vegas strip. El Rancho paved the way for theme architecture in Las Vegas which was to transform the image of the city with more and more hotels and casinos following the model. Theme architecture was defined by Hess (1995,p33) as “the thorough depiction of a particular historical era or geographical area in the architecture, ornament, costumes and service of the hotel”. Theme architecture became the role model for many hotels and casinos that emerged in large numbers in the form of a mass market during 1950s. During this process, neon had become a popular input in the façade of the buildings so much that the signage became an important element of connectivity of the hotel with the road side on the Las Vegas strip. The flip side of this was that gambling and casinos paved way for organised crime.
Capitalist development led to more material wealth and Las Vegas became epicentre for exhibition of opulence. What emerged then was the post industrial society with post modern values of consumerism. Casinos and hotels competed with each other in creating novel attractions for the tourists that included not only gamblers but also families and children. It was thus a constant challenge for the casinos to have attractions that suit children and families while at the same time luring the gamblers and so theme parks emerged as the best strategy.
Theme parks are described by Michael Sorkin (1992) ‘as places of simulation without end, characterised by a spatiality plus technological and physical surveillance and control’. Dear (2000, p203) points out the pivotal moment in the casino history of Las Vegas when Circus was opened which had acrobats suspended above the gamblers’ heads in the gaming pits below and children were put on a separate, second level midway having a clear view of the circus attractions. Many hotels with tourist accommodations had their passage ways and walkways that pass through the casino thus making sure that the tourists are attracted to the gambling dens.
The business scene of Las Vegas had a big change from 1968 when the new law allowed corporations to own casinos. This attracted big investments in to the leisure industry from all fronts and got, in Hess’s terms (1995, p100), the ‘corporate splendour’. Mega hotels with innovative themes poured in to the city. For instance, Mirage hotel came up in 1989, had a volcanic island that erupts every fifteen minutes after dark, at the front of the hotel. The Excalibur opened in 1990 had a Disney style Magic Kingdom and Treasure Island in 1993 had a mock pirate battle at the front of the hotel.

Urbanization

Dear (2000, p204) observes that Las Vegas had become the fastest growing metropolitan area from 1990 onwards. The population of Las Vegas has increased 14 percent between 1990 and 1992 and reached 300,000. The land area increased from 80 square miles in 1988 to 92 square miles in 1995. Residential boom actually began in 1978 itself in the south and west of Las Vegas with increasing urbanisation that was apparently dominated by residential subdivisions connected by commercial strips along the major streets with large squares of undeveloped land in between.
Though massive deindustrialization occurred with the fading out of the traditional manufacturing industry, Las Vegas picked up with the emerging high tech, white collar industry. Thus Soja’s concept of flexcities (2000, p145-345) was apparent in the urban restructuring that happened in Las Vegas where manufacturing industries got replaced by post-Fordist information economy with the emergence of more and more call centres. Las Vegas that got reputed literally as a 24 hour city turned out to be the best place for call centres where workers would be more than willing to work longer hours. However, the biggest employer is still the hotel and casino industry which employs one quarter of the work force. Some studies done by Clayton (1995, p4) observe that two thirds of the region’s half million workers are in gambling related jobs.

Post modernity

Las Vegas at present typically exemplifies the post modern urban condition with its transformation and restructuring that had taken place over the years. In this context it is relevant to recapitulate the six discourses of post metropolis as delineated by Soja (2000). While the first three discourses pointed out the causes of urbanisation through processes of Exopolis, deindustrialisation and post-Fordist economic restructuring, globalisaton and emergence of Flexcities, the last three discourses highlight the consequences of urbanization in the modern era, in terms of emergence of repolarized metropolis with revamping of classes, Carceral city that is security and surveillance rich and Simcities that made their way to urban imaginary.
Las Vegas with all its glitter and simulations, seems to be highly depictive of the Simcities model propounded by Soja (ibid). According to Soja, the regional urban restructuring is a localized version of the global restructuring and it becomes particularly relevant when dealing with the notions of modernity, modernism and modernization. The transition to post modernity can not be seen independent of the past definitions of modernity but is only a selective process of deconstruction and reconstitution. Therefore Soja (1996, p451) says that, post modernity is the relative weight given to change versus continuity, to new versus old strategies and structures. It has always been the endeavour of the western world to question the existing reality and bring in new changes and discoveries and in that sense old hegemony is challenged at all scales, global and local and in all walks of life like economy, polity, popular culture and every day life aspects. Thus the world implicitly or explicitly is becoming post modern.
Post modernism, in this sense, is also seen in the urban imaginary and restructuring. This can be understood at the back drop of the concept of ‘the precession of simulacra’ propounded by the French theorist of post modernity, Jean Baudrillard (1994). Simulacra are the ‘exact copies of originals that no longer exist or perhaps never existed in the first place’ (as cited in Soja, 1996, p452). As Soja (ibid) observes, these hyper simulations or simulacra have always existed in religions and cultures historically. In the modern world these hyper simulations have come to occupy every day life through specialised entertainment and fantasy worlds like Disneyland and Hollywood. These real fakes have infiltrated in to the day to day life of post modern society and impact in the way we choose to live and work, the way we eat and hear, the way we relate to others, the way we shape our built environment and spend our leisure time.Thus hyper realities have become a part of social construction of urban life in the post modern world.
Technology determines and aids in defining the scale and scope of this hyper reality in the information age. Popular media and the new communication technologies help in diffusing this hyper reality through techniques of cyber space like spin doctors, artificial intelligence, virtual reality etc. This hyper reality engineered for a global reach through the spin doctors also has an impact on the urban landscape. More and more theme parks emerge that bring this post modern simulacra in to the real lives. Soja (ibid) identifies two types of post modern urban geographies that have emerged in the garb of hyper reality. One is that of emergence of ‘theme parking’ and the second is the ‘scamscape’ in which ‘fraud is practiced with the ultimate in hyper simulated honesty’ (Soja, 1996,p453).
Soja (ibid) points out that in a theme parked city, the choice of living is not only in terms of affordability, proximity to work place, or access to good facilities but also in terms of life style theme, which recreates one’s own fantasy land. The urban land scape is designed in order to bring these hyper realities in to real world where the post modern life is split between fantasy and the real. This fantasy world is called the Sim city that can take the people to different places in the world without travelling, taste the food, hear the language and observe traditions without leaving one’s county.
Las Vegas has been modelled on the lines of the Sim city trying to bring virtual reality in to every day life. For instance, Luxor hotel which was completed in 1993 is in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid with a broad setback from the Las Vegas Strip occupied by the figure of a god, a porte cochere (Dear, 2000, p204). It has an elaborate sunken garden with a fountain which has a laser light show at periodic intervals. Its physical arrangement is designed in such a way that it is meant particularly for people by car and has every thing inside that suits people of all ages like gambling, accommodation, variety of restaurants and an indoor theme park. Similarly, Caesar’s palace opened the forum shopping mall next to the casino in 1992. With that, it has not only anchored its customers within the casino’s surroundings, but also attracts people off the street. From the casino it is easy to stroll in to the shopping street which has a piazza that reminds of an Italian town. It has the statues of Bacchus and other gods at the centre of the piazza welcoming the customers and the lighting in the Forum cycles through rounds of day and night. The Stratosphere Tower has a hotel, casino and a thrill ride 1149 feet above and it was opened in 1996. In 1997 came up a new gigantic theme hotel called the Newyork-Newyork that tried to bring the Manhattan skyline in to the Strip. The new invention in recent years is the connectivity of all the casinos through a monorail which obviates the necessity to come out of one casino and get in to the other on one’s own. Instead the customers go where the monorail goes, i.e. in to the other casino.

Las Vegas & post modernism

Monorail connectivity of casinos showcases another facet of Las Vegas that juxtaposes consumerism and the post modern consumption. As Firat (2001, p109) observes, Las Vegas of course is the urban space of the hyper reality and simulations. And in that sense, it has also maintained fragmentation, through which a consumer gets totally involved in to the enclaves of exotic experiences and every time gets a new experience, as all the hotels and casinos maintain different themes. While theme parks are not new and have come to take place in almost every post modern city, Las Vegas stands apart in its multiple themes thus not singling out one particular theme identity of the city. Firat (ibid) points out that Las Vegas has inculcated a typical mentality that takes the hyper real beyond the original experience and makes that experience more memorable than the original. This is made possible with new technologies that help in creating simulations more impressive and imaginary rather than just reproduction of the original. This depicts the mentality of people and city in wanting experiences of the past and future while in the present in the seductive form. This motive is expressed by the architects of Luxor hotel : “in designing the architectural motif and configuration of this pre-Egyptian civilization, our idea was that everything you’ve even seen in Egypt is a poor facsimile of what this high technology civilization developed” (as cited in Firat, 2001, p109). Thus the simulations of Las Vegas have been powerful in becoming really real and thus taking the place of real in every day lives.

Las Vegas and Post modern consumption

As said earlier, tourism industry is the biggest in Las Vegas getting tourists of different nationalities and ethnicities from different parts of the world. Apparently, twenty nine million tourists visited Las Vegas in 1995 (Firat, 2001, p110). And visitors these days are interested in having varied experiences of hyper simulations and thematizations rather than just gambling. And so gambling and thematization have been packaged by the hotels and casinos to give the best variety of experiences to the consumers. Firat (ibid) observes that this has brought an intriguing transformation in the consumer mentality. In the consumer’s mind the distinction between the artificial and the actual has been blurred. This blurring is not in terms of physical distinction but in terms of the experiential value. For instance the artificial volcano in front of Mirage hotel of course can be distinguished from the natural volcano but the experience one has with the artificial simulations is so exhaustive that one needs no natural situations to get that experience.
The visitors in to the pyramid of Luxor hotel experience the artefacts of pharoah’s tombs that look so real and so prefer these experiences which take them in to the situation while the actual tombs depict only the remains. Thus Firat (ibid) points out that, experiences of the fantasy have become integral to the experience of the real so much that, there is a growing feeling among the consumers that the reality of the experience is less a source of intensity and meaning. This diminishing demarcation between fantasy and real in terms of experiential value seen in the contemporary consumer culture makes it clear that the intensity of experience is a function of its spectacularity and its ability to evoke meaning rather than its reality.
According to the modernist discourse, the real is independent of the human agency and exists only to be discovered, where as, fantasy is created and constructed. For instance New York or Los Angeles are the real wonders to be discovered while Disney land and Universal studios are spectacular to enjoy. But for an ordinary, modern consumer, both are equally fantastic and spectacular and it is only in the feeling and thinking that they differentiate between the two. For a post modern consumer, fantasy is so integral and thrilling that the hyper real becomes almost real. This is so true in the case of Las Vegas which is visited by both post modern and the modern consumers. Firat (2001, p 113) identifies the modern consumers as those who visit Las Vegas to gamble to get material fortunes through which material opulence can be acquired. There the impulse of the modern consumer is to buy in order to appropriate value and to use. Where as the post modern consumers visit Las Vegas seeking varied experiences and through them search for meanings of life in the present because they have lost faith in singular experiences and therefore would like to expose themselves to different experiences to grasp the life realities.
This quest for new and varied experiences of the post modern consumers is well recognised by the business men of Las Vegas who cash on their need and create innovative encounters. Monorail connectivity of casinos is one of these attempts to keep the customers anchored to the wonder worlds and take them by default through varied experiences. But in this endeavour, again hegemony of the market ideology takes the lead. The construction of spaces and urban encounters are created and packaged for a commercial purpose as a result of which the post modern consumer does not get the total satisfaction of the experiences. In such circumstances, as Firat (2001, p 114) observes, the meaning of consumption also gets transformed. The post modern consumer ends up purchasing the experiences in pre-packaged forms. The intention of the consumer in getting novel experiences is met by a package of experiences pre-determined and show cased in order to be purchased for a price. Thus the post modern consumer is led in to the trap of the market forces. Where the modern consumer would purchase pre-packaged products, the post modern consumer ends up purchasing life experiences in the garb of novelty but again in a pre-determined form. Las Vegas typically depicts this post modern city where urban living is surrounded by a hyper reality for the market driven material consumption.
The simulacra or the hyper simulations in the post modern urban situations often produce a lot of paradoxes for the consumers. For instance, the urban professionals lost in the urban routine feel detached from their true selves and seek novel experiences. Simcities like Las Vegas offer many varied alternatives of experiences. But these experiences come to them through a series of commercial packages and within these packages, many experiences are pre planned to provide the utmost thrill and exciting encounter. The paradox in this, as Firat (ibid) points out, is that people who have been living real lives in their real world through out the year while feeling loss of self, find their self or at least feel that they have found one in their two weeks of encounters in hyper reality where every experience is designed and prefabricated with a commercial interest.
The urban landscape is also restructured for creating these make-believe worlds. For instance, the old Fremont Street which was the gambling centre of downtown Las Vegas experienced major renovation and had a complete face lift as a result of mega projects on Las Vegas Strip. Traditional neighbourhoods are rearranged along with emergence of mini cities within hotels and casinos. Urban development took a centrifugal path, along with increasing congestion, environmental pollution and water shortages. Las Vegas remained a prototype for any other American city and its model of development cautions the other cities of impact of fantasy on real life in creating virtual reality. When fantasy takes over real, as Baudrillard (1994, p146) asserts, all reality becomes residual. He recognises that this is the problem of our times where the real is supplanted but still remains.