The World of Tomorrow!

29Dec07

GM’s car-dependant vision of 1960 at the 1939 World’s Fair. Much of this actually occurred thanks to GM’s massive influence after WWII. The ideas presented here, although somewhat whimsical, were a revolutionary change from standard transportation planning of the time. Las Vegas embodies much of the vision presented in these videos.

posted by RetroRacer13

Of course by 1958, there was even more ambitious vision…

An excerpt from the 1958 “Disneyland” TV Show episode entitled “Magic Highway USA”. In this last part of the show, an exploration into possible future Transportation technologies is made. It’s hard to believe how little we’ve accomplished on this front since 1958, and how limited the scope for imagining such future technologies has become. Witness an artifact from a time where the future was greeted with optimism. Note the striking animation style here, achieved with fairly limited animation and spectacular layouts.

From mjjohnston12 via Polls Boutique.

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UNLV Roundup

07Dec07

It has been quite a semester here at UNLV. In light of the Las Vegas Rodeo going on at the Thomas and Mack, here’s a visual roundup of how the campus has continued to evolve.

The above photo is of the completed southern section of the new Moyer Student Union. The balloons were due to a sorority pledge event.

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Frazier Hall Protest

06Dec07

About 20 students and local activists marched, chanted, and held signs to protest the planned domolition of Maude Frazier Hall last week.

Audio: Mark Alden and President Ashley + some students at the protest

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Philling the Seats

04Dec07

Now you’re probably wondering what a symphonic orchestra has to do with urban planning. Well plenty, the LV Philharmonic plays at the Ham Auditorium on the UNLV campus. It’s one element in how the university’s day and night roles can vary.

Parking used up during the day by students are filled by concert goers at night. Stores and cafe’s surrounding campus that cater to students become late-night hangouts for classical music connoisseurs where they discuss the merits of Beethoven’s third symphony or the role of Tchaikovsky’s terse rhythms on the Russian revolution.

Well not quite…

Most of the after-parties and hobnobbing after the shows takes place at more sophisticated venues, and for good financial reasons, thats where the donors prefer.

So how can the neighborhood capture some of these folks as they disperse out of Ham Hall and head to the adjacent parking lot?

The Philharmonic’s young professional association Muse serves a different purpose of attracting a younger, hipper audience to concerts. The goal is to attract locals who currently go to the clubs on the Strip and bring them into a different sort of social scene through cocktail parties and like-minded company.

“It’s a marketing strategy to grow the base,” says marketing director Renato Estacio. In order to do this they hold pre-concert art gallery viewings and other events on campus, and after concerts they organize cocktail parties and meet ups at area bars and night clubs. Although they are usually not the kinds of places that take residence around UNLV.

“After concerts we go to whatever the hip, young bar is at the moment,” said marketing coordinator Aisha O’Brien. “Last time it was Sidebar, the next one will be at the Venetian.”

What, No Freakin Frog?

Filling up Philharmonic concerts, like many cultural events, relies heavily on the kind of word of mouth marketing that spreads because of related parties and events. And contributing to the Philharmonic means getting to know important businesspeople and community leaders of Las Vegas.

Despite this benefit, during Saturday night’s holiday concert director David Itkin requested that the audience invite everyone they would see to the next days concert, promising available seating. The philharmonic is still not meeting it’s attendance goals.

The fur coat-clad, 60-something audience left about a fourth of the seats unfilled. There was a contingent of children in attendance, thanks to a school outreach program, but not enough to match the the character of this year’s lighter and funnier performance. The Twelve Days of Christmas featured musical references and sound effects and some songs took on a jazzier character. There were, however, few families or children to enjoy the new direction. Perhaps it was due to the newness of the program. Or perhaps the stuffiness of the regulars (this is coming from someone who got shushed).

Attracting a larger audience may be a matter of updating the content of the show or creating a full experience before and after it but what the Philharmonic might really need is an effort to change the character of the audience. Jokes and dialogue are an integral part of the show on stage, so should it be between members of the audience. Conversation between patrons should not be discouraged, a full interactive experience is what audiences are looking for.

Yes its a Philharmonic, but its also Las Vegas. David Itkin gets it but some of the audience, it seems, has yet to catch on.

Related:

Classical Music gets Sexier and Younger [LV Sun]

Philharmonic wants to know a little about you, too [LV Sun]

And director David Itkin on KNPR’s State of Nevada

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Town Center

27Nov07

The Town Center mall recently opened on the South Strip next to Fry’s Electronics, here’s some pics.

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Richard Serfas and The District

06Nov07

Green Valley Ranch, originally uploaded by Casino Connection.

Richard Serfas of American Nevada Company talked about the challenges of building a mixed use development in the Las Vegas Valley and how it might influence future planning. Can The District do more good than bad as an example of urban planning? Is it better than standard sprawl or is it worse because it gives the impression that it isn’t? Find out why don’t you.

work! : (

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Luxor to Start Walking Normal

01Nov07

Luxor Hotel and Janet’s Las Vegas, originally uploaded by Bryan Correira.

As opposed to like an Egyptian.

Old news but still pretty interesting. The second and third levels of the Luxor have been pretty much abandoned anyways. The new theme will be generic luxury/modern contemporary/chic elegance/nouveau riche/avant garde. Neat.

The Luxor’s New Threads [Las Vegas Sun]

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The Las Vegas Rock Garden

01Nov07

Front yard landscape before sewer trenching, originally uploaded by Vegas Swallows.

The first thing many people notice when moving in to the valley is our distinctive rocky front and back yards. The Xeriscape concept, however, does not call for simply laying down a truck load of rocks around your property.

Xeriscaping refers to landscaping in ways that do not require supplemental irrigation. It is promoted in areas that do not have easily accessible supplies of fresh water. The word Xeriscaping was coined by combining xeros (Greek for “dry”) with landscape. Plants whose natural requirements are appropriate to the local climate are emphasized, and care is taken to avoid losing water to evaporation and run-off.

-Wikipedia

We are starting to see these exclusively rock landscapes around commercial buildings and on UNLV’s campus. The goal of saving water is great but why do we need to replace grass with such an unusable alternative? What happened to good old concrete patios? Even bare dirt would be more usable than sharp, heavy and hard to walk across rocks. It destroys any other possibility for land use aside from aesthetics.

Instead of rock yards, how about simple patios? How about larger sidewalks? Concrete benches next to buildings? C’mon people, be creative, grass is not just there to look nice and neither should any replacement for it (most rock gardens do not look nice anyways). Use the extra land for something, even parking would have more use than a rock carpet.

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The Ghost of Maude Frazier

25Oct07

UNLV, originally uploaded by Pantyhose Girl’s.

The Sun posted an interesting article about the fight to save Frazier Hall from demolition.

Razing Frazier Hall will make UNLV a more inviting place, giving passersby a view of lush, tree-shaded lawns now hidden behind the building. Maude Frazier, the pioneer educator who pressured state officials a half -century ago to build a university in Southern Nevada, will be honored elsewhere at UNLV.

But the classic Vegas blow-it-up-when-it-ages mentality doesn’t sit well with everyone.

“I am concerned about just tearing everything down and imploding a feature of Las Vegas, which we do constantly up and down the Strip,” said Nevada System of Higher Education Regent Steve Sisolak, who earned a master’s degree from UNLV in 1978. “I don’t know if we want to take that to the university.”

I didn’t know Maude, but I know that I would not be fighting to protect an old outdated building that is of little use aside from nostalgia. This may be a case of historic vs. historical. Frazier Hall may be historic but its not historically important as a building. There is nothing special about its architecture that warrants attempts to save it.

I would much rather prefer a nice little park with a statue and some benches, maybe an arched entrance if I were Maude.

Progress or History? [Las Vegas Sun]

 

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Community or Parking

04Oct07

Las Vegas parking lot, originally uploaded by kmhinkle.

There are two schools of thought about the future of UNLV and its community. On one side are those who want more parking, quicker and easier access to and from the school. On the other side are those who would like people to stick around. No need for parking since we don’t really want people driving to the campus from outlying areas, they should live nearby. We should create that whole “community” thing we’ve heard about.

It seems that this discussion has, in part, been taking place since the early days of the Strip. Robert Venturi published Learning from Las Vegas in 1972. The book is an appreciation not only of the unique architecture of the Strip but also of its extremely car-friendly nature.

On the other hand, there are plans for Midtown UNLV and other non-standard development models, but they only seem to showcase just how rooted our city is in automobile-dependent culture. In a recent Rebel Yell article, Gerry Bomotti compared Midtown (or at least its construction) to the District at Green Valley Ranch. This seems to show a fundamental misunderstanding of what Midtown is, or should be, about.

The District is hideous. It’s surrounded by parking lots, sits next to a giant overpowering casino and is surrounded by walled and gated suburbs. This is not the kind of future we want for UNLV. And so far it stands out as one of the best examples of fake urbanism. It’s basically an imitation of a very limited urban center.

I have not heard anything about a regional plan that addresses the concerns related to the Midtown Project, which is necessary. Transportation issues were touched on at the latest planning meeting but defered to the RTC (Regional Planning Commision). Midtown planners need to solve the transportation issue themselves. In order for this plan to succeed it needs to take the form of a transit village. Whether bases on bus-rapid-transit or the extension of the monorail from the MGM, which as planned sits alone on the west side of the Thomas and Mack Center, surrounded by parking lots. We need some sort of efficient mass transit system connected to the project in order to get people out of their cars. Unless Midtown’s planners seriously consider transportation, and the wider region surrounding the development and it’s associated zoning codes and limitations. We may just end up with another isolated version of the District.

Discussion about community at UNLV I think might be misplaced. All such discussion, which reaches out into the entire valley comes back to urban planning. More specifically, planning for cars, and lots of them. I took an urban planning class last semester and it was almost entirely centered on technical details. Legal requirements like numbers of parking spaces per square foot or sidewalk requirements, turning radius, all have their place, but miss the point of what urban planning (not rural) is. It’s planning an urban environment. One where people can walk around, create communities, feel comfortable. Not just drive somewhere, park, drive somewhere else, park and so on.

We don’t, as far as I’ve seen, plan our city much at all. Private developers do all the planning. The county just maintains the Super Grid. Pretty much everything in between the 8-lane arterials are the work of private developers, concerned mainly with quick financial turnover, not communities.

Sure you can have non-location based community, but i think that there is something in us, something genetic that makes us want to know the people in the next cave; to create casual networks of people, to organize ourselves into public forces. Can we do it in a world solely reliant on cars? I don’t know but I’d rather not take the chance.

I am not a fan of parking, I think if we eliminated all parking requirements and their associated lots, our cities would be a lot more interesting and lively. Planners and builders would have to create actual cities instead of groups of houses and strip malls. Lack of parking is more of a stick than a carrot but it will coax a few people into reconsidering their transit options.

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