[dude66]

Las Vegas
Utopia of Clowns

from The City in Mind

by James Howard Kunstler


They say that Antarctica is the worst place on earth, but I believe that distinction belongs to Las Vegas, hands down. For one thing, Antarctica is more pleasing to look at. The natural scenery is about equal to Nevada’s in desolate grandeur, but Antarctica’s man-made artifacts are less distressing to an average human being’s neural network. The population of Antarctica, though tiny in comparison, is better-educated, less transient, and employed in more honorable work. Las Vegas certainly leads in cheap buffets, but the result is a shocking rate of obesity with attendent medical disorders. Some might even argue that overall Antarctica has better weather. In Las Vegas, a baby left unattended in the back seat of a car for nine minutes will fricasee before its mother returns with the dry cleaning.

As I write, Las Vegas is the fastest-growing city in the United States. For a culture that understands things only in terms of numbers, this supposedly proves that it must be a splendid place. I’ve heard it touted often as the American city of the future, the prototype habitat for a society in which the old boundaries between work, leisure, entertainment, information, production, service, and acquisition dissolve, and a new exciting, colorful, pleasure-laden human meta-existence finds material expression in any wishful form the imagination might conjure out of an ever-mutating blend of history, fantasy, electrosilicon alchemy and unfettered desire. If Las Vegas truly is our city of the future, then we might as well all cut our own throats tomorrow. I certainly felt like cutting mine after only a few days there, so overwhelming was the sheer anomie provoked by every particular of its design and operation. As a city it’s a futureless catastrophe. As a tourist trap, it’s a meta-joke. As a theosophical matter, it presents proof that we are a wicked people who deserve to be punished. In the historical context, it is the place where America’s spirit crawled off to die.

The trouble with Las Vegas is not just that it is ridiculous and dysfunctional, but that anybody might take it seriously as a model for human ecology on anything but the most extreme provisional terms. That they do might in itself be proof that American civic culture has reached a terminal stage. Even the casual observer can see that Las Vegas is approaching its tipping point as a viable urban system, particularly in the matter of scale. In evolutionary biology, at the threshold of extinction organisms often attain gigantic size and a narrow specialty of operation that leaves them very little room to adapt when their environment changes even slightly. This is the predicament of Las Vegas. Its components have attained a physical enormity that will leave them vulnurable to political, economic, and social changes that are bearing down upon us with all the inexorable force of history.

Las Vegas evolved as a crude extrapolation of several elements of American culture: the defiance of nature, abnormally cheap land, vast empty space for expansion, and the belief that it is possible to get something for nothing -- these elements all presenting themselves there in the most extreme form. The trouble with extrapolation as a growth model is that it assumes the continuation of all present conditions in the future, only more so. Since this is not consistent with how the world works, systems organized on this basis fail. Anyway, to extrapolate urban growth based only on extreme conditions invites certain catastrophe, since the law of unintended consequences will produce ever more compounded skewed outcomes. The destiny of Las Vegas, therefore, would seem bright in the same sense that a thermonuclear explosion is bright. I view it as a model for the extinction of the system I call the National Automobile Slum.

the rest continues at:

Las Vegas chapter by James Howard Kunstler

[verynicebecky]

whoa dude.....that is deep.

[jfkIII]

Some may wonder why it gets so hot in Las Vegas. Heat is a basic element of Hell.

I seriously do believe that someday...today's LV will be the textbook study case of modern city collapse.

[ParkTwain]

I found and read this essay some time ago. Unfortunately, a lot of the "facts" offered up in the piece are incorrect, and the author can't get several of the key names (Bugsy Segal) right. This is result of a sloppy writer reacting to secondary and tertiary sources.

More comments in a later post.

[dude66]

Originally Posted by jfkIII

I seriously do believe that someday...today's LV will be the textbook study case of modern city collapse.

And I'd say that "someday" is whenever water becomes astronomically expensive.

[guinnessjim]

yeah...can't argue the water issue. the whole west will be in trouble (including SoCal) if the water situation isn't resolved. the only way i can see to resolve it is for desalinization to become an effective means of fresh water production.

then LV will be piping that stuff in from the coast, rather than lake mead and the colorado.

[sheriff]

Originally Posted by jfkIII

Some may wonder why it gets so hot in Las Vegas. Heat is a basic element of Hell.

I seriously do believe that someday...today's LV will be the textbook study case of modern city collapse.

Yeah---but Reno is so close to Hell---you can see Sparks. Not really how I feel about that fine area, but it's an old joke.

[sheriff]

Yes, I like the essay, been my premise all along---LV embodies everything that is wrong and perverted with humankind---but it's always been OK; cause this is LV. THEcesspool.

[cjski21]

Everything I like to do is a sin in the eyes of the catholic church, so hell is probably where I want to be. Las Vegas, here I come.

BTW, your heat is nowhere near as bad as it was when I was stationed at Luke AFB in Phoenix. But hot IS hot and I love the desert.

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by ParkTwain

I found and read this essay some time ago. Unfortunately, a lot of the "facts" offered up in the piece are incorrect, and the author can't get several of the key names (Bugsy Segal) right. This is result of a sloppy writer reacting to secondary and tertiary sources.

More comments in a later post.

Come on PT...Kunstler is an idiot. An opinionated idiot who writes well...and I love his famed eyesore of the month.

But this is the Archbishop of all the bubble bursters...remember when he had the stock market at 4000? He was one of the idiots who proclaimed the end of the world on 2000...and projects that the entire society will collapse when oil production peaks...

One reads Kunstler for the trip...never for truth.