This album was previously seen in my Facebook album "American Cultural Landscape: Vegas". Most people go to Vegas for the party, but not me, I went because my American Cultural Landscape professor, Paul Groth, told me to. All pictures taken by my trusty camera phone.
The first clue that we were really in Vegas was this bouquet vending machine in the airport. For both directions I suppose.
Simulacrum: New York, New York. Copy of the real or truth in its own right?
A "decorated shed" (Venturi and Scott Brown) the sign overpowers the building, which is merely a "shed".
This is when the sidewalk on the Strip gave us no choice but to go up an escalator. Talk about choreographed space: you are forced to go exactly where you are told, which is motivated by commercial interests.
The commercial interests became clear when the Strip then turned into a mall. This is still the sidewalk!
This view, from a pedestrian overpass, shows that that the Strip is a 10 lane highway. This goes to show that Las Vegas is what Urban Renewal would have done to all of our cities if no one had protested.
But once you park your car or hop out of your cab, and turn your back to the street, you can be completely swept into the world the casinos create. This is exactly what we all think we want, until we completely lose touch with nature and feel sick to the soul. Vegas is all about the illusion.
The only consolation for a critical New Urbanist is that Las Vegas is authentic in its gaudy commercialism, the epitome of its type, and for that you have to give it respect.
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