Las Vegas to demolish casinos in major redevelopment

Responding to the growing threat of global warming, the City of Las Vegas announced today that it will disassemble the past several decades of strip-centered development and suburban sprawl and return to what Mayor Carolyn Goodman called “a true desert condition.”

As part of her “Back to the Desert Initiative,” the mayor of the sun-baked Nevada city will oversee replacement of the Strip by a series of open-air souks with narrow passages covered by fabric, filtering the sunlight and making a more comfortable environment. “For the first time in 60 years, we won’t have to wear sunglasses every time we step outdoors,” the mayor said.

Materials recovered during disassembly of the casinos—and of thousands of bank-owned tract houses—will be reused in a comprehensive plan calling for each neighborhood to be organized around a mixed-use center. Each center will be walking distance of all the households in the neighborhood.

“We’re done with ‘gaming,’” Goodman said. “The future is going to require citizens who can think farther into the future than the next spin of the roulette wheel. To clear their heads, residents are going to have to spend some quality time in libraries, reading books. I just hope people still know that a 'book' is a lot different from a 'bookie.'”

The mayor explained the thinking behind the initiative: “We got it wrong—the Mob, the casinos, the Strip, the subdivisions full of houses have to be air-conditioned night and day. We got everything wrong—from Wayne Newton to the cost of water and power.”

The City received a major grant from the Congress for New Urbanism to stock each neighborhood library with a collection of books on urban civilizations that have lasted more than 200 years.

“We’re going to have a city-wide debate,” she said. “People will make their case as to which vision they think holds up best in the long run—the one expressed by Learning from Las Vegas or the one summed up in Hegemann and Peets’ American Vitruvius.”

“The sad thing,” Goodman said, “is that we actually believed it when Learning from Las Vegas suggested that out way of life was just fine. We’re going to sue the publisher, MIT Press, to help us pay for the needed reconstruction. We’ve just witnessed what was probably the world’s most blinding flash in the pan, and it’s going to be costly to recover from it.”

Major lending for physical reorganization of the city will be provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Sources speaking on condition of anonymity said that in exchange for receiving long-term loans from the Salt Lake City-based church, the City will urge the State of Nevada to merge with neighboring Utah to form a new State of Deseret. The laws of the combined state will be considerably more stringent than Nevada’s current laws. The winking eye that is now Nevada’s official state symbol will be sold to the Cayman Islands.

“That’s pretty much the end of the brothel business, too,” Goodman acknowledged. “But we’ll still have our wedding chapels.” 

"It's amazing," she said, "how the first day of April can cause you to see things in a whole new light. I just hope we don't slip back to our 'Wench, Waste, and Wither' philosophy when this day is over."