The Vegas Effect
And you thought it was just a large paved area in the middle of the desert: turns out Las Vegas is where all that rare wine, Kobe beef and luxury clothing – all those master sommeliers, overlit liquor stores, tattoo parlors and palm trees – have gone.
Vegas, that is, has been buying everything.
[Image: "Strong demand for palms by Vegas hotels and housing developments has meant fewer of the trees for Los Angeles." (Lawrence K. Ho/LA Times)].
[Image: "The lush gardens of the Mirage Hotel and Casino are full of palm trees" – and tourists reeling from the effects of nearby shrimp buffets. (Lawrence K. Ho/LA Times)].
"Call it the Vegas Effect," the LA Times writes. "The city's relentless demand for luxury has contributed to a rise in prices for Kobe beef and palm trees, wiped out exclusive wine stock, lured wealthy Asian tourists away from Rodeo Drive with more exclusive boutiques and kept touring Broadway shows such as 'Avenue Q' and 'Spamalot' out of Los Angeles."
It got Spamalot.
[Image: "Newly planted palm trees line Las Vegas Boulevard in front of the Fashion Show, a high-end retail shopping area" – where "high-end" means it has a wildly air-conditioned Waldenbooks and that they play the iPod song over and over again on outdoor loudspeakers. (Lawrence K. Ho/LA Times)].
What's irritating about photos like these, however, is that just to the right and left of those images – just outside the tourist frame – you actually find huge expanses of unused car parks stretching off to the edge of nowhere, littered with empty Big Gulp cups. Everything's covered in dust.
You arrive in Las Vegas expecting some kind of verdant, dense, immersive quasi-paradise, a berserk Manhattan, L.A. compressed – but it's actually a bunch of gigantic, linked parking lots, people seem to have stopped at red lights for no reason (that's an intersection? because it looks like a parking lot), and you have to walk two miles just to get inside the next building – which is then full of lingerie shops for 13 year-old girls.
Yet all you ever see are photographs like these.
In any case, to learn more from Las Vegas, stop by TENbyTEN.
Vegas, that is, has been buying everything.
[Image: "Strong demand for palms by Vegas hotels and housing developments has meant fewer of the trees for Los Angeles." (Lawrence K. Ho/LA Times)].
[Image: "The lush gardens of the Mirage Hotel and Casino are full of palm trees" – and tourists reeling from the effects of nearby shrimp buffets. (Lawrence K. Ho/LA Times)].
"Call it the Vegas Effect," the LA Times writes. "The city's relentless demand for luxury has contributed to a rise in prices for Kobe beef and palm trees, wiped out exclusive wine stock, lured wealthy Asian tourists away from Rodeo Drive with more exclusive boutiques and kept touring Broadway shows such as 'Avenue Q' and 'Spamalot' out of Los Angeles."
It got Spamalot.
[Image: "Newly planted palm trees line Las Vegas Boulevard in front of the Fashion Show, a high-end retail shopping area" – where "high-end" means it has a wildly air-conditioned Waldenbooks and that they play the iPod song over and over again on outdoor loudspeakers. (Lawrence K. Ho/LA Times)].
What's irritating about photos like these, however, is that just to the right and left of those images – just outside the tourist frame – you actually find huge expanses of unused car parks stretching off to the edge of nowhere, littered with empty Big Gulp cups. Everything's covered in dust.
You arrive in Las Vegas expecting some kind of verdant, dense, immersive quasi-paradise, a berserk Manhattan, L.A. compressed – but it's actually a bunch of gigantic, linked parking lots, people seem to have stopped at red lights for no reason (that's an intersection? because it looks like a parking lot), and you have to walk two miles just to get inside the next building – which is then full of lingerie shops for 13 year-old girls.
Yet all you ever see are photographs like these.
In any case, to learn more from Las Vegas, stop by TENbyTEN.
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9 Comments:
Geoff, while Vegas is certainly a black hole of consumption, your snide comments about the city only serve to underestimate the power (dangerous and otherwise) of Sin City. Like it or not, the influence of Las Vegas manifests itself not only between the coasts but around the world. Jokes about mall loudspeakers and over-fed tourists only trivialize the importance of the city.
Another interesting black hole of consumption is Beijing. The BBC's Documentary Archive had an eye-opening series in December as the city prepares for the 2008 Olympics. China has been consuming so much steel that the cost of steel has skyrocketed, with enormous ripple effects on virtually every construction project in the US.
PS: I read the article you reference in the LAT a few months ago; your links to the article are broken.
Well, sorry you found it so trivial and snide; but I've removed the links – which, as you mention, weren't working.
I think Vegas and Beijing actually have quite a lot in common, meanwhile, and it would be interesting to see if: 1) this is because of Chinese research into American city-form; or, 2) this is because of some kind of "internal logic" to economic development, that cities become self-devouring after a certain point, symbolically vacant even while hyper-referential, and then globally-distorting of futures markets in building materials and other commodities. Including luxury goods.
So if my comments are snide, I'm sorry, but I didn't have a good time there. Even intellectually. It felt like I was in a dry outer suburb of Chicago. Though I ate a lot of shrimp, and saw palm trees.
I suppose that's my loss...
Hey Geoff, thanks for the response.
I find it sort of amusing that we are looking at cities (through the lens of Las Vegas) as machines that simply process commodities and exchange money, instead of as spaces for human interaction and behavior. The irony in this is that the superstructures created by Harrah's and company take into very detailed account the quantifiable realities of human interaction, in the interests of maximizing the efficiency of the machine: how long will the average person walk before they start spending money again?
Like many, whenever I enter a controlled environment such as the Las Vegas Strip, I have the distinct feeling that I am being used. Because - to a certain degree - that's exactly what's happening.
As for the commonalities between Beijing and Vegas, I think the Chinese are looking to maximize profits (an inherent part of economic development), and Las Vegas certainly provides an excellent model for new development.
What do you mean, though, by a city becoming "self-devouring"? Sure, a city can experience such spectacular growth that it alters world markets for beef, water, and steel, but at what point does it begin to cannibalize itself?
I primarily mean construction booms, and the razing/rebuilding of old neighborhoods. In Beijing, the hutongs for instance - the old, picturesque alleyways that meander through the city - are being bulldozed to make room for office towers and residential high-rises. The city devours itself, reprocesses its land and real estate. In Vegas, it's old casinos whose demolition is now public entertainment. How long before these new casinos - or new mega-high-rises - are devoured to clear space for something even bigger, or more appropriate for the era? LA's demolitions of Bunker Hill. Now there's a freeway.
My primary point is that Vegas is meant to be a city full of lessons - however dark those may be - whether that's architectural, economic, social, or even psychological, but it actually just feels like a desert version of, say, Raleigh, or another Phoenix; if I hadn't known I was in Vegas, in other words, I would have thought we'd stopped by some particularly unexciting strip mall outside Palm Springs. The dense lustre is not there; the immersive virtual reality of signs and wonders is not there; there are just lots of shrimp buffets and light blue jeans and check-cashing stores. Manhattan is more exciting. For me. Manhattan is more immersive, and parts me with more of my money. Manhattan may not have the juxtaposition with the desert - but it's got an interesting web of hydrological engineering works that extend up into the Catskills and beyond, even reaching into central Quebec for hydro-electricity, and so Manhattan, too, offers its own allegories of human infrastructure v. the state of nature. Conquest of resources and all that.
Clearly this is all just my opinion. But Vegas has been hyped as this huge lesson for everyone, capitalism distilled, but it actually just feels like any other American city (albeit with less to do). However, I don't think the city's development board have missed out on this: thus the Vegas suburbs boom, families moving there, school districts growing. The city is re-presenting itself not as a Hunter Thompson/Sin City/Anti-Paradise but as a desert version of Seattle. Family friendly. A place to raise kids. Safe. It doesn't have the exuberance of Dubai, the density of Shanghai, or the appeal of Manhattan. For me. Being "crazy" in Las Vegas today means eating too much seafood - and the city surely doesn't have a monopoly on that.
It's the fake excess that annoys me, the rebellion-through-shopping-at-different-stores motif. If you want a suburb in the desert, that's fine - it even sounds nice - but 1) use more solar power; and 2) don't market yourself as Sin City if all you offer is discount lobster tails.
Then there's this, from the New York Times:
In Las Vegas alone, developers have canceled at least four other buildings in the last year, including one called Aqua Blue that was to contain a Michael Jordan health club. Dozens of other buildings, in which units have been sold, may never break ground, said Brian Gordon, a principal at Applied Analysis, a Las Vegas consulting firm. Mr. Gordon said there are 97 condo projects in the works in greater Las Vegas, representing more than 52,000 units.
"I don't think anyone would expect that all these projects will move forward," Mr. Gordon said. He predicted that fewer than half of them would be built in the next five years. Of course, if the market cools enough, some buyers may be happy to get their deposits back.
The pitfalls for condo buyers may be particularly deep in and around Las Vegas, where construction prices have been skyrocketing. Mr. Gordon says some of his clients who are developers have reported a 30 percent increase in the cost of labor and materials in the last year alone. That means that developers who presell apartments may find construction costs wiping out profits even before they break ground.
(...)
Still, the Icon cancellation came as a surprise, in part because its developer is a partnership of two giants: the Related Group of Florida, which calls itself the nation's leading condo developer, headed by Jorge Perez, and the Related Companies, headed by Stephen M. Ross, the developer of the Time Warner Center in Manhattan. Icon's two 48-story towers were expected to be completed in 2007 and 2008.
Mr. Perez was out of the country and could not be reached for comment, a company spokesman said. Reached on his cellphone, Martin Burger, the president of Related Las Vegas, hung up.
You're right; Manhattan and Los Angeles are often infinitely more complex than Las Vegas. But what brings such allure and attention to cities like Vegas and Phoenix and Miami is the fact that they are new. It does not matter that they are not as complex as our older and/or larger urban centers. The amazement that accompanies the instantaneous construction of a city in the wild is mesmerizing, whether it has any intellectual lessons for us or not.
As for quickly growing cities becoming self-devouring, this phenomenon is not limited to Las Vegas or Beijing. Every single city goes through this process. Midtown Manhattan is one of the ultimate examples. I don't see it as so much a dark cycle of consumption leading to destruction as it is a natural cycle of urban growth that happens to varying degrees in varying areas.
For example, my hometown (Newport, RI) is an example of the anti-Vegas. Since the 1960's, almost everything has been preserved and restored. Even the new is made to look old (that can be a problem sometimes, but that's another story). A friend of mine told me that the only thing Vegas can't buy is character. It may look like Paris, but you know you're in Vegas. Consumption has its limits.
That's the thing, though - it doesn't look like Paris; it looks like an American strip mall. The virtual/referential/immersive/illusionistic nature of Las Vegas – am I in Paris? am I in Egypt? is this Manhattan? – the architectural, cultural and historical disorientation that I was expecting to encounter, simply isn't there. Or if it is there, it's because Vegas looks like Phoenix. Am I in Phoenix? Thing is, I like Phoenix; but Phoenix doesn't sell consumption as a form of rebellion. It's a matter of promises: if you promise excess and insanity but only deliver a huge, 24-hour liquor store and some shrimp buffets, then some people will inevitably feel short-changed.
In any case, point taken. And I'm having fun here, so thanks for keepin' on. Meanwhile I agree, self-devouring cities are nothing new; but two quick points: 1) it always amazes me when London digs up an old Roman fort or some medieval wall somewhere while digging up foundations for bank towers or Jubilee line extensions (urban self-cannibalism as archaeology); and 2) it's the pace of self-destruction that bewilders: one could imagine a kind of Architectural Olympics, a Deconstructive X-Games, where cities are required to annihilate themselves entirely – then rebuild themselves as entirely different, entirely new, entirely re-designed cities in the exact same site, and whoever does it fastest and with the most depth, rigor and completion, wins.
Vegas? Shanghai? Dubai? Beijing? Moscow?
Who would win?
Or some weird new law is passed in China: all buildings older than 5 years must be destroyed. Surely there's a Bradbury novel in there somewhere?
Of course this opens a whole new world of casino themes: The Raleigh-Durham. The Research Triangle Park. Welcome to: The Sacramento. Spend a little more... at the Urbana-Champlain.
Until 2010, when the system implodes: a Vegas casino built to look like... Las Vegas. It will be called: The Las Vegas.
Okay, yes, Las Vegas does not look like Paris. You're right, it more closely resembles Phoenix. But the Strip is an environment almost entirely of facade. Every visitor knows that behind the Eiffel Tower or the "Manhattan skyscraper," it is essentially Phoenix. Las Vegas does not promise a reality of "excess and insanity." It promises a false world that the visitor must acknowledge and, to a degree, give in to. You know that you're not in Paris, or Egypt, so you know that there will be cracks in the illusion. But you came to Vegas to play dress up, to know that you are pretending. Because where else can you do that? Your local riverboat casino certainly isn't providing that experience; everything else, no matter how entertaining, is real, and you know it. Shades of Beaudrillard?
Honestly, I would not be surprised if a casino were built called "The Las Vegas." Once the city fantasizes about enough exotic destinations, it will eventually return to the most exotic destination of them all: Las Vegas, that illicit desert crossroads of showgirls and comedy acts and the Mafia that it left in the dust decades ago.
Some more tangential thoughts that you mentioned: The recent excavation of a colonial wall in downtown Manhattan found during construction of the new South Ferry station was a great news item in the recent past. Imagine if that wall actually had life: there would be an entire parallel universe of colonial New Amsterdam just below the pavement. It reminds me of Thames Street, the main north-south artery in downtown Newport, where certain sections are asphalted over. However, there are potholes and cracks, revealing the cobblestone of a centuries-old parallel world beneath.
More tangents: Cities building, bulldozing and then rebuilding in a speed contest? See the "New Boston" plan (from I believe the 1950's), available in the incredible book "Mapping Boston." It would've bulldozed everything in the North End, West End, finanical district, and South End for a new urban structure. But don't worry, it spared landmarks like Old North Church, surrounding them as monuments in what amounted to a lush sculpture park. While simply a contest entry and not officially adopted by the BRA, it's incredible what state power can accomplish in so little time. Because of that, my bets are on Beijing, Shanghai, or Dubai.
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