Las Vegas

America’s western cities are booming. The major metropolitan areas of the West  read more »

For readers too young to have any memory of Liberace, in the 1950s and 60s he was one of the highest paid entertainers in the world. He had his own television show that rivaled “I Love Lucy” and he performed live at Carnegie Hall in New York and the London Palladium. He’s often dismissed as someone who appealed to women of a certain age and men of a certain persuasion. But whenever I see a rapper wearing heavy gold chains, diamond studs, garish watches, oversized rings, and extravagant furs stepping out of a ridiculously expensive car….  read more »

I hear a great deal about sustainability in the built environment that sounds both encouraging and delusional. These messages come from well intentioned environmentalists as well as corporate marketing departments. The general tone of the conversation is similar either way. Everyone can continue to live the way we do now, but by making a few minor adjustments we’ll transition away from coal, oil, and natural gas to benign materials and clean renewable energy. This transition will save households money, preserve nature, and be profitable for private enterprise.  read more »

Back in 2014 I was in the live audience here in San Francisco listening to Tony Hsieh speak. He gave a presentation that was partly about the formation of his company Zappos. But more interestingly to me, it was about his attempts at urban revitalization in downtown Las Vegas where his company had relocated.  read more »

I just returned from a trip to Las Vegas. I was ready for a little post pandemic adventure and Vegas is just so easy. It was good to get out into the world again and explore the ever evolving Vegas metroplex.  read more »

In a tragic development, Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos and founder of the Las Vegas Downtown project, died at at 46 of complications from injuries suffered in a house fire.  read more »

America is still a mobile nation. Back in the 2000-2010 decade, 12.9 million people moved interstate, nearly five percent of the total population. In the 2010s the population has been a bit less mobile, with net domestic migration of 11.7 million residents, slightly under four percent. Nonetheless, 11.7 million is a large number. This is nearly equal to the population of Ohio, with only five states being larger  read more »

The six transit legacy cities - mostly urban cores that grew largely before the advent of the automobile - increased their concentration of transit work trips to 57.9% of the national transit commuting, according to the 2018 American Community Survey. At the same time, working at home strengthened its position as the nation’s third leading mode of work access, with transit falling to fourth. The transit commuting market share dropped from 5.0% in 2017 to 4.9% in 2018.  read more »

A couple weeks ago I wrote some thoughts after a recent visit to Las Vegas. Most of what I wrote about concerned the Strip and downtown areas of the city, without question the two most recognizable and most frequently visited parts of the region.  read more »

There’s been a lot in the news lately about the troubles plaguing Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project in Las Vegas. The latest is a longish report in the Guardian, which notes:

Yet by late September of this year, the press – especially the technology press – had begun asking some serious questions, as the Downtown Project suddenly laid off 30 people – 10% of the total it then directly employed. Alongside portentous headlines announcing this “bloodletting” appeared claims that Hsieh had “stepped down” from his position of leadership of the project. A damning open letter from the Downtown Project’s former “director of imagination”, David Gould, called the operation from which he had just resigned “a collage of decadence, greed and missing leadership … There were heroes among us,” he added, “and it is for them that my soul weeps.”

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