HOW TO THINK ABOUT CITIES

Las Vegas: The Boom - Bust Bender
Rick Cole, January 14, 2010 (New Geography)

[This is a lengthy but abridged version of a brilliant critique written by urban redesign visionary Rick Cole, City Manager of Ventura, Calfornia. Click thru here for the full-length essay.]

"It's delightfully easy to blast Las Vegas… or simply to make fun of it. It is the world capital of shamelessness, so it is more or less beside the point to criticize. Yet with the debut of the colossal $8.5 billion CityCenter, Vegas makes pretension to "sustainable urbanism." Even by Vegas standards of hype, this is mendacity at a colossal scale.

"CityCenter describes itself as "a collection of spectacular hotels and residences, sensational spas, astonishing dining and extraordinary shopping." But MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren asserts higher aspirations for the largest private development in U.S. history…CityCenter’s developers claim that it is "one of the largest sustainable developments in the world, with six Gold LEED certifications from the U.S. Green Building Council."

Sustainable? (click to enlarge)

"The distinction says more about the shallowness of LEED scoring than about the depth of CityCenter's commitment to sustainability. Although the buildings employ state-of-the-art energy saving (hence money saving) technology, the gold ratings are based in part on pure gimmickry…A mecca for gambling, shopping and recreation built in a desert climate is, by definition, unsustainable.

"And not just environmentally. The project only averted bankruptcy this spring when MGM paid $100 million in debt service owed by its partner, Dubai World…Is it too much to hope that this glitzy fiasco will permanently discredit the blend of leveraged debt, "starchitecture," and headlong consumerism that has spread around the world with ever taller and more fanciful towers and ever more grandiose claims to represent a glorious future?"

Public transport in the Pearl District leaves room for biking, walking and living. (click to enlarge)


"Megaprojects are the product of meglomania, whether in Las Vegas, Shanghai, Dubai, Universal Studios or downtown Los Angeles. No amount of solar-paneled green cladding can disguise their fundamental flaw: Bigness dwarfs and often destroys the human scale that great places have in common.

"It is hard not to admire the audacity…The Greeks, however, had a name for such delusions: hubris…We Americans have our own parable of urban hubris in the saga of Robert Moses. Yet…public officials continue to be particularly prone to the siren song of megadevelopments. Grand Avenue in Los Angeles; Ground Zero in Manhattan; Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn; Hunters Point in San Francisco... the list of recent “public-private partnerships” to remake cities on a grandiose scale could fill a page…The invariable promises of investment returns commensurate with the project’s size invariably disappoint…"

click to enlarge

"Sustainable urbanism comes in small doses, crafted to the climate and history of real places. It comes from new building that respects human scale and the fabric of organic towns and cities. It emerges from the efforts of property owners, investors, designers and craftspeople understanding and applying timeless principles to the needs of our time.

"Sustainable urbanism doesn’t have to carry the weight of the overhead and egos of mega developers, starchitects, and all the myriad fixers…It doesn’t put the public purse at risk on speculative real estate ventures. The public isn’t jolted with yet another over-the-top effort to shock and awe…Instead, sustainable urbanism thrives off both the synergy and the competition that comes from appropriately sized and scaled additions to the cityscape."

click to enlarge

"That is not to say that urban interventions must be tiny – only that they not be bloated and autonomous. When the 104 acre Villa Italia Mall in Lakewood, Colorado was taken down, its redevelopment into the mixed-use downtown of Belmar was certainly a big project…Similarly, the redevelopment of the thirty-four acre Burlington Northern Railyard on the northern edge of the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon is the product of a single developer…Yet it differs sharply from the megaprojects in its faithful extension of the famous Portland block pattern over the grayfield site. It may be large, but it is the antithesis of the self-contained and almost invariably anti-urban design of megaprojects. It is simply several more well-executed blocks of the Pearl District…Forest City’s Stapleton is an exemplary model for trying to faithfully execute urbanism on a mega-scale…

"Nor is real urbanism simply an academic conceit or an elitist niche. On the contrary, it is the only proven model for successful civilizations, prosperous regions, environmental staying power and decent living standards for working people. The modern real estate industry’s products, of which megaprojects are simply the reductio ad absurdum examples, have yet to pass the test of surviving in geographies and economic eras not characterized by cheap oil and cheap money. The current economic reckoning is a warning that, like the dinosaurs, megaprojects are highly vulnerable to any change in the climate."

Maybe the Las Vegas architects were having so much fun they didn't get to the "with nature" part. (click to enlarge)

"The counter argument is, of course, that no one knows if they will stand the test of time…Megaprojects [however] are bad bets, even in Las Vegas. In almost every regard, giant projects crush the essential elements of diversity, flexibility and intimacy necessary to making – and sustaining – great places.

"Instead of CityCenter, imagine something on its scale broken up into 1500 more modest projects across America; each significant enough to make a mark, yet restrained enough to strengthen the city instead of overwhelm it. Not only would the investment have made a far better contribution to the goal of sustainable urbanism, it would have been far less recklessly risky…"