Yeah, in the LV valley there are hints of good planning. Good plans on paper, which get off the ground with some coherency (great building design and good building placement in terms of parking, public space and connectivity, and even some mixed-use), but get chipped away with each passing planning commission and Council meeting. The Town Center Plan, near where I lived, could have been excellent, but I and the other LV planning staff were ignored as the monster home builders -many of whom are now out of business- walled off entire chunks of the area and paved it over with hundreds of acres of generic stucco box future slums. The chairman and vice chairman of the planning commission were big landowners / developers, and another was a contractor. That, and the Mayor / City Council responded to criticism in public hearings by saying things like, "I certainly won't be the one to stand in the way of the free market," and "Hey, if YOU want to have Town Center be a perfect Utopia, then YOU should buy the land and put YOUR money into developing it." Rarely did a development come forth without a plethora of variance and rezoning requests, and rarely did the politicians even discuss these requests before passing on them.

however

The REALLY EXCELLENT hints of good planning, can actually be found across the streets from Las Vegas, surprisingly, in Clark County, North Las Vegas, and Henderson. North Las Vegas's 5th Street Corridor, is worthy of admiration- and stands little chance of being chipped away-- there's little political pressure during this depression, and there's an unusual amount of CIVIC PR

"I notice how your newsrag sees urban design as within the realm of architects... no practicing urban planners were consulted as part of this exercise, (and there are some darn good ones in LV). Professors, who mainly sit, cogitate, and beg for public money are considered by your intern-writers as experts. The discussion in "Making Designs onVegas" is a tired rehash of many others in the LV Fishwrap, ehr, Weekly over the years. Almost nothing new, save for one of your brain trust stating that "we architects / designers are the only ones who think about these things," which comes across as quite elitist. To state that LV ought to be the solar energy capital of the U.S. merely states the obvious... no visionary illumination here. Did your interviewees miss last year's start-up of Acciona's largest-in-the-America solar thermal plant in Boulder City? Or Nellis AFB having gone completely solar with it's own off-grid solar facility? Average people in LV DO think about about and discuss urban design issues / architecture, the professors need to mingle with their taxpaying masses a bit more. Fact is, LV and to a greater extent, Phoenix, has of late been a palette for some extraordinarily green, aesthetic design. LV Weekly, rise above your inner-snarkiness and do an article on these projects, and the people who made them a reality